People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun. Philip Roth More Quotes by Philip Roth More Quotes From Philip Roth The only way to have a funeral is to invite everyone who ever knew the person and just wait for the accident to happen-somebody who comes in out of the blue and says the truth. Everything else is table manners. Philip Roth funeral waiting blue 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. Philip Roth sea doe feelings Sex is all the enchantment required. Do men find women so enchanting once the sex is taken out? Does anyone find anyone that enchanting unless they have sexual business with them? Who else are you enchanted by? Nobody. Philip Roth taken men sex Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love! Philip Roth grief writing art I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk. Philip Roth fighting book years The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Philip Roth alive facts people Only in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles - and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn't their fault they were given a gift like speech - look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic. Philip Roth florida humorous mother I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive. Philip Roth pages alive writing Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. the illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life. Philip Roth wrecks writing may How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard. Philip Roth easy-life life-is easy I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones. Philip Roth bones biographies memories 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 spokes phrases feelings You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature. Philip Roth human-nature too-much humans Teaching ... particularly in the 1990s, teaching what is far and away the dumbest generation in American history, is the same as walking up Broadway in Manhattan talking to yourself, except instead of eighteen people who hear you in the street talking to yourself, they're all in the room. They know, like, nothing. Philip Roth teaching talking people Doctor doctor, what do you say, lets put the id back in yid Philip Roth doctors Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art. Philip Roth moral humor art Don't judge it. Just write it. Don't judge it. It's not for you to judge it. Philip Roth judging writing Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline. Philip Roth decline aggravation greed I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't. Philip Roth smart writing fiction You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility. Philip Roth make-you-think responsibility thinking
