509 Quotes by Philip Roth

Don’t be against yourself. There’s enough cruelty in the world as it is. Don’t make things worse by scapegoating yourself.

The vulnerability in that smile was the surprising element- the vulnerability of our record-breaking muscleman faced with all the crudeness it takes to stay alive. The smile’s refusal to recognize, let alone to sanction in himself, the savage obstinacy that seven decades of surviving requires of a man.

There were many hours when I never quite know how I’d gotten there or why I stayed.

Everything runs away, beginning with who you are, and at some indefinable point you come to half understand that the ruthless antagonist is yourself.

Hypergamy. Do you know what it is?” “Never heard of it.” “Bedding women of a superior social class. Desire based on a superior social class.

Literature isn’t a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.

If anybody asks, ‘Can you do this job? Can you handle it?’ you tell ‘em ‘Absolutely.’ By the time they find out that you can’t, you’ll have already learned, and the job’ll be yours. And who knows, it might just turn out to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Epidemics have a way of spontaneously running out of steam.

When, with a smile, she let the dirt slip slowly across her curled palm and out the side of her hand onto the coffin, the gesture looked like the prelude to a carnal act. Clearly this was a man to whom she’d once given much thought.