Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them. Philip Roth More Quotes by Philip Roth More Quotes From Philip Roth When I have a first draft, I have a floor under my feet that I can walk on. And then, especially with the help of the computer, rewriting is so easy to do with the computer, much easier than it used to be with the typewriter. So the books go through numerous drafts. Philip Roth typewriters feet book I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. Philip Roth writing book thinking You don't want to repeat yourself for one. You don't want to fall into the clichés for another. And you don't want to be licentious really. You want to be descriptive, if you can be. And you're not setting out to arouse anybody. Philip Roth repeats want fall The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen and it can't compete with the computer screen I don't think. And now we have all those screens so against all those screens I think the book can't measure up. Philip Roth book television thinking Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living. Philip Roth ashes writing book To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really. Philip Roth focus reading two Undermining experience, embellishing experience, rearranging and enlarging experience into a species of mythology. Philip Roth I decided that I was done with fiction, i don't want to read any more of it, write any more of it, and I don't even want to talk about it anymore. Philip Roth top-news It's not a question that interests me. I know exactly what it means to be Jewish and it's really not interesting, i'm an American. Philip Roth top-news 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. Philip Roth me perspective time war You write differently in each book. It may appear to be similar to readers, but you're a different writer in each book because you haven't approached that subject before. And every subject brings out a different prose strain in you. Fundamentally, yes, you're contained as one writer. But you have various voices. Like a good actor. Philip Roth good like you book With the draft, everybody was involved. Everybody was fodder. When you got to be 21, 22 and graduated from college, for two years your life stopped. If you had been running in the direction of your life, you had to stop and do this other thing which was, if not menacing, just plain boring. Philip Roth you boring college life My traducers propound my alleged malefaction as though I have spewed venom on women for half a century. But only a madman would go to the trouble of writing 31 books in order to affirm his hatred. Philip Roth go women trouble writing I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here. Philip Roth good aesthetic future culture History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. Philip Roth i-am awake trying history Nothing keeps its promise. Philip Roth keeps nothing promise
