509 Quotes by Philip Roth

True, he had chosen to live alone, but not unbearably alone. The worst of being unbearably alone was that you had to bear it – either that or you were sunk. You had to work hard to prevent your mind from sabotaging you by its looking hungrily back at the superabundant past.

It’s human to have a secret, but it’s just as human to reveal it sooner or later.

Never in my life had I so harshly judged any adult – not my parents, not even Alvin or Uncle Monty – nor had I understood till then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others. “Did you meet Mr. von Ribbentrop?” Now almost girlishly bashful, she replied, “I danced with Mr. von Ribbentrop.” “Where?

It’s no picnic up there in the egosphere.

We work in the dark – we do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

We live in an age in which the imagination of the novelist is helpless against what he knows he is going to read in tomorrow’s newspaper.

Everything you say says either more than you wanted it to say or less than you wanted it to say; and everything you do does either more than you wanted it to do or less than you wanted it to do. What you said and did made a difference, all right, but not the difference you intended.

It’s the little questions from women about tappets that finally push men over the edge.

Why is the smallest thing I do for pleasure immediately illicit – while the rest of the world rolls laughing in the mud! Pig? She ought to see the charges and complaints that are filed in my office in a single morning: what people do to one another, out of greed and hatred! For dough! For power! For spite! For nothing!