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World War Iii Will Be Triggered Off Not By Suppressed Nationalists Seeking Political Independence, As Happened The First Time Around When The Serbs At Sarajevo Shot The Heir To The Austrian Throne, But By Some Semiliterate, Whacked-out "loner" Who Lobs A Rocket Into A Nuclear Arsenal In Order To Impress Brooke Shields.

-Philip Roth

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World War Iii Will

Philip Roth

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World War Iii Will Be Triggered Off Not By Suppressed Nationalists Seeking Political Independence, As Happened The First Time Around When The Serbs At Sarajevo Shot The Heir To The Austrian Throne, But By Some Semiliterate, Whacked-out "loner" Who Lobs A Rocket Into A Nuclear Arsenal In Order To Impress Brooke Shields.

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Maybe The Best Thing Would Be To Forget Being Right Or Wrong About People And Just Go Along For The Ride. But If You Can Do That -- Well, Lucky You.

The Secret To Living In The Rush Of The World With A Minimum Of Pain Is To Get As Many People As Possible To String Along With Your Delusions; The Trick To Living Alone Up Here, Away From All Agitating Entanglements, Allurements, And Expectations, Apart Especially From One's Own Intensity, Is To Organize The Silence, To Think Of Its Mountaintop Plenitude As Capital, Silence As Wealth Exponentially Increasing. The Encircling Silence As Your Chosen Source Of Advantage And Your Only Intimate.

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We Live In An Age In Which The Imagination Of The Novelist Is Helpless Against What He Knows He Is Going To Read In Tomorrow's Newspaper.

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For Someone Whose Roots In America Were Strong But Only Inches Deep, And Who Had No Experience, Such As A Catholic Child Might, Of An Awesome Hierarchy That Was Real And Felt, Baseball Was A Kind Of Secular Church That Reached Into Every Class And Region Of The Nation And Bound Millions Upon Millions Of Us Together In Common Concerns, Loyalties, Rituals, Enthusiasms, And Antagonisms. Baseball Made Me Understand What Patriotism Was About, At Its Best.

That Can Happen When People Die, The Argument With Them Drops Away And People So Flawed While They Were Drawing Breath That At Times They Were All But Unbearable Now Assert Themselves In The Most Appealing Way, And What Was Least To Your Liking The Day Before Yesterday Becomes In The Limousine Behind The Hearse A Cause Not Only For Sympathetic Amusement But For Admiration

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.

When He [joe Lewis] Was Asked Upon His Retirement About His Long Career, Joe Sweetly Summed It Up In Just Ten Words. 'i Did The Best I Could With What I Had'.

Satire Is Moral Outrage Transformed Into Comic Art.

You Take Off Your Clothes And You're In Bed With Somebody, And That Is Indeed Where Whatever You've Concealed, Your Particularity, Whatever It May Be, However Encrypted, Is Going To Be Found Out, And That's What All The Shyness Is All About And What Everybody Fears.

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I Came To New York And In Only Hours, New York Did What It Does To People: Awakened The Possibilities. Hope Breaks Out.

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I Haven't Written A Word Of Fiction Since 2009. I Have No Desire To Write Fiction. I Did What I Did And It's Done. There's More To Life Than Writing And Publishing Fiction. There Is Another Way Entirely, Amazed As I Am To Discover It At This Late Date.

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I Turn Sentences Around. That's My Life. I Write A Sentence And Then I Turn It Around. Then I Look At It And Turn It Around Again.

And Since We Don’t Just Forget Things Because They Don’t Matter But Also Forget Things Because They Matter Too Much Because Each Of Us Remembers And Forgets In A Pattern Whose Labyrinthine Windings Are An Identification Mark No Less Distinctive Than A Fingerprintit’s No Wonder That The Shards Of Reality One Person Will Cherish As A Biography Can Seem To Someone Else Who, Say, Happened To Have Eaten Some Ten Thousand Dinners At The Very Same Kitchen Table, To Be A Willful Excursion Into Mythomania

For Discipline Is Imposed Not Just On Oneself But On Those In One's Orbit.

You Go To Someone And You Think, 'i'll Tell Him This.' But Why? The Impulse Is That The Telling Is Going To Relieve You. And That's Why You Feel Awful Later--you've Relieved Yourself, And If It Truly Is Tragic And Awful, It's Not Better, It's Worse---the Exhibitionism Inherent To A Confession Has Only Made The Misery Worse.

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Is An Intelligent Human Being Likely To Be Much More Than A Large-scale Manufacturer Of Misunderstanding?

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World War Iii Will Be Triggered Off Not By Suppressed Nationalists Seeking Political Independence, As Happened The First Time Around When The Serbs At Sarajevo Shot The Heir To The Austrian Throne, But By Some Semiliterate, Whacked-out "loner" Who Lobs A Rocket Into A Nuclear Arsenal In Order To Impress Brooke Shields.

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Because That Is When You Love Somebody - When You See Them Being Game In The Face Of The Worst. Not Courageous. Not Heroic. Just Game.

--nor Had I Understood Til Then How The Shameless Vanity Of Utter Fools Can So Strongly Determine The Fate Of Others

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A Writer Has To Be Driven Crazy To Help Him To See. A Writer Needs His Poisons.

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.

When The Whole World Doesn't Believe In God, It'll Be A Great Place.

Literature Isn't A Moral Beauty Contest. Its Power Arises From The Authority And Audacity With Which The Impersonation Is Pulled Off; The Belief It Inspires Is What Counts.

To Become A Celebrity Is To Become A Brand Name. There Is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, And Philip Roth. Ivory Is The Soap That Floats; Rice Krispies The Breakfast Cereal That Goes Snap-crackle-pop; Philip Roth The Jew Who Masturbates With A Piece Of Liver.

American Society [...] Not Only Sanctions Gross And Unfair Relations Among Men, But It Encourages Them. Now, Can That Be Denied? No. Rivalry, Competition, Envy, Jealousy, All That Is Malignant In Human Character Is Nourished By The System. Possession, Money, Property--on Such Corrupt Standards As These Do You People Measure Happiness And Success.

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Like All Enjoyable Things, You See, It Has Unenjoyable Parts To It.

What I Would Really Love To Happen To Me Would Be If I Came Upon An Idea That Would Keep Me Busy Until I Die So I Wouldn't Have To Go Through The Business Of Thinking Up A New Book. But I Wouldn't Mind Writing A Long Book Which Is Going To Occupy Me For The Rest Of My Life.

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The Road To Hell Is Paved With Works-in-progress.

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.

You Put Too Much Stock In Human Intelligence, It Doesn't Annihilate Human Nature.

I Think I Write Or Publish As Much As I Do Because I Can Bear Being Without A Book To Work On. But Routinely When I Finish A Book, I Think, "what Will I Do? Where Will I Get An Idea?" And A Kind Of Low-level Panic Sets In. And Then Eventually Something Happens. I Don't Know. If I Knew How It Happened I Would Repeat The Process, But I Don't Know - Something Just Occurs To Me.

Stop Worrying About Growing Old. And Think About Growing Up.

Dreams? If Only They Had Been! But I Don't Need Dreams, Doctor, That's Why I Hardly Have Them—because I Have This Life Instead. With Me It All Happens In Broad Daylight!

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 Horror Of Being Caged Has Lost Its Thrill.

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.

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.

Everyone Becomes A Part Of History Whether They Like It Or Not And Whether They Know It Or Not.

People Are Unjust To Anger - It Can Be Enlivening And A Lot Of Fun.

The Signore...wishes Her To Begin At The Beginning.

I Am The Raskolnikov Of Jerking Off – The Sticky Evidence Is Everywhere!

I’m Interested In What People Do With The Chaos In Their Lives And How They Respond To It, And Simultaneously What They Do With What They Feel Like Are Limitations. If They Push Against These Limitations, Will They Wind Up In The Realm Of Chaos, Or Will They Push Against Limitations And Wind Up In The World Of Freedom?

Let's Hope The First Comes First.

The Question To Ask About The Writer Isn't 'why Does He Behave So Badly?' But 'what Does He Gain By Wearing This Mask?

The Thought Of The Novelist Lies Not In The Remarks Of His Characters Or Even In Their Introspection But In The Plight He Has Invented For His Characters - In The Juxtaposition Of Those Characters And In The Lifelike Ramifications Of The Ensemble They Make: Their Density, Their Substantiality, Their Lived Existence Actualized In All Its Nuanced Particulars, Is In Fact His Thought Metabolized.

There Is Truth And Then Again There Is Truth. For All That The World Is Full Of People Who Go Around Believing They've Got You Or Your Neighbor Figured Out, There Really Is No Bottom To What Is Not Known. The Truth About Us Is Endless. As Are The Lies.

If You Read A Novel In More Than Two Weeks, You Don't Read The Novel Really.

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.

The Pleasure Isn't In Owning The Person. The Pleasure Is This. Having Another Contender In The Room With You.

The Legend Engraved On The Face Of The Jewish Nickel- On The Body Of Every Jewish Child!- Not In God We Trust, But Someday You'll Be A Parent And You'll Know What It's Like.

I Wouldn't Mind Writing A Long Book Which Is Going To Occupy Me For The Rest Of My Life.

A Father For Whom Everything Is An Unshakable Duty, For Whom There Is A Right Way And A Wrong Way And Nothing In Between, A Father Whose Compound Of Ambitions, Biases, And Beliefs Is So Unruffled By Careful Thinking That He Isn’t As Easy To Escape From As He Seems. Limited Men With Limitless Energy; Men Quick To Be Friendly And Quick To Be Fed Up; Men For Whom The Most Serious Thing In Life Is To Keep Going Despite Everything. And We Were Their Sons. It Was Our Job To Love Them.

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.

The Best Readers Come To Fiction To Be Free Of ... All That Isn't Fiction.

I Know I'm Not Going To Write As Well As I Used To. I No Longer Have The Stamina To Endure The Frustration. Writing Is Frustration - It's Daily Frustration, Not To Mention Humiliation.

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.

Everything Dictated Silence And Self-control But I Couldn't Restrain Myself And Spoke My Mind.

Life Is Just A Short Period Of Time In Which You Are Alive.

'haunted By The Past' Is A Commonplace Phrase Because It's A Commonplace Experience. Even If One Is Not, Strictly Speaking, 'haunted', The Past Is Perpetually With One In The Present, And The Longer It Grows And The Further It Recedes The Stronger Its Presence Seems To Become.

Too Late, But I Understand. That We Don't Perish Of Understanding Everything Too Late, That Is A Miracle. But We Do Perish Of That -- Of Just That.

Doctor, I Had Never Had Anybody Like Her In My Life, She Was The Fulfillment Of My Most Lascivious Adolescent Dreams– But Marry Her, Can She Be Serious? You See, For All Her Preening And Perfumes, She Has A Very Low Opinion Of Herself, And Simultaneously– And Here Is The Source Of Much Of Our Trouble-a Ridiculously High Opinion Of Me. And Simultaneously, A Very Low Opinion Of Me! She Is One Confused Monkey, And, I'm Afraid, Not Too Very Bright.

In My Childhood I Led The Life Of A Sage, When I Grew Up I Started Climbing Trees

It’s Amazing What Lies People Can Sustain Behind The Mask Of Their Real Faces.

You Cannot Observe People Through An Ideology. Your Ideology Observes For You.

Memories Of The Past Are Not Memories Of Facts But Memories Of Your Imaginings Of The Facts.

He Was No More, Freed From Being, Entering Into Nowhere Without Even Knowing It. Just As He'd Feared From The Start.

One Either Imposes One's Ideas Or One Is Imposed On.

Being In The Dark From Sentence To Sentence Is What Convinces Me To Go On.

The Hard Part Is, Of Course, The Proximity Of Death. The Number Has No Meaning As Long As You're Fit And Healthy. But You Know That You Only Have So Much Time Left And You Don't Know How Much It Is. It Could Be A Very Short Time.

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.

How Far Back Must We Go To Discover The Beginning Of Trouble?

The Terror Of The Unforeseen Is What The Science Of History Hides, Turning A Disaster Into An Epic.

Suicide Is The Role You Write For Yourself. You Inhabit It And You Enact It. All Carefully Staged -- Where They Will Find You And How They Will Find You. But One Performance Only.

When You Publish A Book, It's The World's Book. The World Edits It.

Just Like Those Who Are Incurably Ill, The Aged Know Everything About Their Dying Except Exactly When.

At A Certain Stage Of Misery, You'll Try Anything To Explain What's Going On With You, Even If You Know It Doesn't Explain A Thing And It's One Failed Explanation After Another.

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.

Old Age Isn't A Battle; Old Age Is A Massacre.

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.

Unless One Is Inordinately Fond Of Subordination, One Is Always At War.

There's Something Every Woman Wants, And That's A Man To Blame.

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.

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Clementine Paddleford

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