Philip Roth Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.”

“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.”

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

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

“When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.”

“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.”

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

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

“Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.”