Philip Roth Quotes

“All that we don’t know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.”

“Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not.”

“Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.”

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.”

“There are no uncontaminated angels.”

“You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you.”

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.”

“Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.”

“You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.”

“Old age isn't a battle: old age is a massacre.”

“You be greater than your feelings. I don't demand this of you - life does. Otherwise you'll be washed away by feelings. You'll be washed out to sea and never seen again.”

“You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.”

“No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game. A man wouldn't have two-thirds of the problems he has if he didn't venture off to get f*cked. It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.”

“Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.”

“The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.”

“You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more.”

“In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees.”

“The danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can't stop.”

“The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.”