509 Quotes by Philip Roth

The goal was to have goals, the aim to have aims. This edict came entangled often in hysteria, the embattled hysteria of those whom experience had taught how little antagonism it takes to wreck a life beyond repair.

America?” said Gamesh, smiling. “Roland, what’s American to you? Or me, or those tens of thousands up in the the stands? It’s just a word they use to keep your nose to the grindstone and your toes to the line. America is the opiate of the people.

I don’t know anybody. I turn sentences around, and that’s it.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no sense.

I have found in my life that I often phone one person when I expect myself, or others expect me, to be phoning someone else; it is what the telephone company calls displacement.

Too late, but I understand. That we don’t perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that – of just that.

I’m not in the business. ‘Liking people’ is often just another racket.

Because you happen to be a writer doesn’t mean you have to deny yourself the ordinary human pleasure of being praised and applauded.

Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.