Philip Roth

“There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty and Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.”

“Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend.”

“As I see it, my focus has never been on masculine power rampant and triumphant but rather on the antithesis: masculine power impaired.”

“Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.”

“Alvin didn't cry, didn't curse, didn't holler.... He was too far gone to roar on that day or even to crack. Only I did.... Only I cracked, alone, later in the one place in our house where I knew I could go to be apart from the living and all that they cannot not do.”

“Simple was never that simple. Still, the self-questioning did take some time to reach him. And if there's anything worse than self-questioning coming too early in life, it's self-questioning coming too late.”

“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.”

“I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.”

“I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah.”

“For me, the passing of time has provided me with subjects I never had before. Subjects I can now look at from a historical perspective. Like the anti-communist era in America. I lived through that. I was a boy; I didn't find a way to write about it until many years later. The same with the Vietnam War.”

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

“That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.”

“הזמן אוזל ואין דבר שאני יכול לעשות ולמי בכלל אכפת. אני הקשיש הקטן שצועד במורד הרחוב והם עוזרים לי. תהילה זה דבר נהדר... עוזרים לך לחצות את הכביש.”

“לרוב אני קורא היסטוריה וביוגרפיות מהמאה ה־20. זאת התקופה שבה חייתי. הייתי ילד קטן או שלמדתי או שעבדתי. הגיע הזמן להשלים פערים.”

“זקנה איננה קרב. היא טבח.”

“יהודי שהוריו בחיים יישאר בן 15 עד שהוריו ימותו.”

“אף סופר לא הגיע לרמתו של קפקא. קפקא הצליח לברוא עולם שאיש לא יצר קודם לכן.”

“אני לא כותב ב'יהודית', אני כותב באמריקאית. חונכתי כאמריקאי. אני אמריקאי.”

“כולם מנסים לשנות, לשכנע, לפתות, לשלוט. הקוראים הטובים ביותר פונים לספרות כדי לנוח מזה.”

“כשאתה מדפיס ספר הוא עובר לרשותו של העולם.”