Phillip Roth > Quotes

“The English Language is a form of communication! Words aren't only bombs and bullets - no, they're little gifts, containing meanings. What is true in love, is equally true at law”
― Phillip Roth

“Be forewarned, Mr. Famous: she's desirable, she's audacious, and she's utterly ruthless, utterly cold-hearted, incomparably selfish, and completely amoral.”
― Phillip Roth

“You begin every book as an amateur...I don't know anything in the beginning, which makes it great fun to write, you know? You don't know anything. You don't even know how to write. So you begin every book as an amateur and as a dummy. And in the writing, you discover the book. Of course, you're in charge. But gradually by writing sentence after sentence, the book, as it were, reveals itself through you to your language - through your language, rather. So each sentence is a revelation. I'm not exaggerating. Each and every sentence is a revelation. And what you're trying to do is hook one sentence to the sentence before and the next one to that sentence. And as you do, you're building a house, you know? [But] the architect and the contractor, they know what the house will look like when it's done. And that's the big difference. I don't have any idea what it will look like when it's done.”
― Phillip Roth

“-Porque ¿qué es la historia? -preguntaba retóricamente cuando estaba en vena instructiva y comunicativa después de cenar-. La historia es cuanto sucede en todas partes. Incluso aquí, Newark. Incluso aquí, en la avenida Summit. Incluso lo que le ocurre en esta casa a un hombre normal… Eso también será historia algún día.”
― Phillip Roth

“[My parents] deeply identified themselves as Jews for historical, genealogical, social reasons, and family reasons and community reasons. They powerfully identified as Jews. But theologically, I wonder. I wonder, really. I don't know.”
― Phillip Roth

“Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious, folderol, meaningless, childish, couldn't stand the complete unadultness, the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers. No hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us.”
― Phillip Roth

“I don't know anything in the beginning, which makes it great fun to write, you know? You don't know anything. You don't even know how to write. So you begin every book as an amateur and as a dummy. And in the writing, you discover the book. Of course, you're in charge. But gradually by writing sentence after sentence, the book, as it were, reveals itself through you to your language - through your language, rather. So each sentence is a revelation. I'm not exaggerating. Each and every sentence is a revelation. And what you're trying to do is hook one sentence to the sentence before and the next one to that sentence. And as you do, you're building a house, you know? [But] the architect and the contractor, they know what the house will look like when it's done. And that's the big difference. I don't have any idea what it will look like when it's done.”
― Phillip Roth

“Tal vez lo que estoy diciendo es que las palabras, por ser palabras, sólo pueden aproximarse a las cosas reales, y por lo tanto, por muy cerca que llegue a esas cosas reales, sólo me aproximo.”
― Phillip Roth

“*Did* fiction do this to him?”
― Phillip Roth

“People run into an obstacle for reasons no one knows. But the obstacle is a temporary impediment. The obstacle disappears and you go on.”
― Phillip Roth