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You Asked If I Thought My Fiction Had Changed Anything In The Culture And The Answer Is No. Sure, There's Been Some Scandal, But People Are Scandalized All The Time; It's A Way Of Life For Them. It Doesn't Mean A Thing. If You Ask If I Want My Fiction To Change Anything In The Culture, The Answer Is Still No. What I Want Is To Possess My Readers While They Are Reading My Book If I Can, To Possess Them In Ways That Other Writers Don't. Then Let Them Return, Just As They Were, To A World Where Everybody Else Is Working To Change, Persuade, Tempt, And Control Them.

-Philip Roth

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You Asked If I

Philip Roth

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You Asked If I Thought My Fiction Had Changed Anything In The Culture And The Answer Is No. Sure, There's Been Some Scandal, But People Are Scandalized All The Time; It's A Way Of Life For Them. It Doesn't Mean A Thing. If You Ask If I Want My Fiction To Change Anything In The Culture, The Answer Is Still No. What I Want Is To Possess My Readers While They Are Reading My Book If I Can, To Possess Them In Ways That Other Writers Don't. Then Let Them Return, Just As They Were, To A World Where Everybody Else Is Working To Change, Persuade, Tempt, And Control Them.

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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.

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.

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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A Jewish Man With His Parents Alive Is Half The Time A Helpless Infant!

No Matter How Much You Know, No Matter How Much You Think, No Matter How Much You Plot And You Connive And You Plan, You're Not Superior To Sex. It's A Very Risky Game.... It's Sex That Disorders Our Normally Ordered Lives.

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.

Many Of The Kiwis Appearing In Powerful Business Circles Around The World Come From Accounting Backgrounds. Yet Often People Have Preset Ideas Of How An Accountant Walks, Talks, Smells - Although Not In The Business Community. For Me It Is A Career That Offers A Lot Of Variety And Challenges And I Love It.

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

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.

I Often Have To Write A Hundred Pages Or More Before There's A Paragraph That's Alive.

The Tragedy Of The Man Not Set Up For Tragedy ? That Is Every Man?s Tragedy.

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.

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

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.

All That We Don't Know Is Astonishing. Even More Astonishing Is What Passes For Knowing.

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

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

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

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Any Satirist Writing A Futuristic Novel Who Had Imagined A President Reagan During The Eisenhower Years Would Have Been Accused Of Perpetrating A Piece Of Crude, Contemptible, Adolescent, Anti-american Wickedness, When, In Fact, He Would Have Succeeded, As Prophetic Sentry, Where Orwell Failed.

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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

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.

You Tasted It. Isn't That Enough? Of What Do You Ever Get More Than A Taste? That's All We're Given In Life, That's All We're Given Of Life. A Taste. There Is No More.

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!

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

I Turn Sentences Around. That's My Life. I Write A Sentence And Then I Turn It Around. Then I Look At It And I Turn It Around Again. Then I Have Lunch. Then I Come Back In And Write Another Sentence. Then I Have Tea And Turn The New Sentence Around. Then I Read The Two Sentences Over And Turn Them Both Around. Then I Lie Down On My Sofa And Think. Then I Get Up And Throw Them Out And Start From The Beginning.

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

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

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

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Sooner Or Later

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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.

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I Think I Write Or Publish As Much As I Do Because I Can Bear Being Without A Book To Work On.

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I'm An Obama Supporter. And If You're An Obama Supporter That Means You Had A Hard Time During The Bush Years.

The Danger With Hatred Is, Once You Start In On It, You Get A Hundred Times More Than You Bargained For. Once You Start, You Can't Stop.

When You Decide 'to Be A Writer,' You Don't Have The Faintest Idea Of What The Work Is Like. When You Begin, You Write Spontaneously Out Of Your Limited Experience Of Both The Unwritten World And The Written World. You're Full Of Naïve Exuberance. 'i Am A Writer!' Rather Like The Excitement Of 'i Have A Lover!' But Working At It Nearly Every Day For Fifty Years Whether It Is Being The Writer Or Being The Lover Turns Out To Be An Extremely Taxing Job And Hardly The Pleasantest Of Human Activities.

Don't Judge It. Just Write It. Don't Judge It. It's Not For You To Judge It.

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

The Horror Of Being Caged Has Lost Its Thrill.

All I Can Tell You With Certainty Is That I, For One, Have No Self, And That I Am Unwilling Or Unable To Perpetrate Upon Myself The Joke Of A Self. What I Have Instead Is A Variety Of Impersonations I Can Do, And Not Only Of Myself - A Troupe Of Players That I Have Internalised, A Permanent Company Of Actors That I Can Call Upon When A Self Is Required. I Am A Theater And Nothing More Than A Theater.

The Book Really Comes To Life In The Rewriting.

People Were Standing Up Everywhere Shouting, "this Is Me! This Is Me!" Every Time You Looked At Them They Stood Up And Told You Who They Were, And The Truth Of It Was That They Had No More Idea Who Or What They Were Than He Had. They Believed Their Flashing Signs, Too. They Ought To Be Standing Up And Shouting, "this Isn't Me! This Isn't Me!" They Would If They Had Any Decency. "this Isn't Me!" Then You Might Know How To Proceed Through The Flashing Bullshit Of This World.

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There Were Many Hours When I Never Quite Know How I'd Gotten There Or Why I Stayed.

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.

I Was Gushing And I Knew It. I Surprised Myself With My Eagerness To Please, Felt Myself Saying Too Much, Explaining Too Much, Overinvolved And Overexcited In The Way You Are When You're A Kid And You Think You've Found A Soul Mate In The New Boy Down The Street And You Feel Yourself Drawn By The Force Of The Courtship And So Act As You Don't Normally Do And A Lot More Openly Than You May Even Want To.

He Had Learned The Worst Lesson That Life Can Teach - That It Makes No Sense.

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 Do Not Say Correct Or Savory. I Do Not Say Seemly Or Even Natural. I Say Serious. Sensationally Serious. Unspeakably Serious. Solemnly, Recklessly, Blissfully Serious.

I Kept Waiting For Him To Lay Bare Something More Than This Pointed Unobjectionableness, But All That Rose To The Surface Was More Surface

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.

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

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

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 Can't Write Good Satirical Fiction In America Because Reality Will Quickly Outdo Anything You Might Invent.

Oh, To Be A Center Fielder, A Center Fielder- And Nothing More

Center Fielders

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

He Is Not Simply Looking Into The Mirror Because He Is Transfixed By What He Sees. Rather, The Artist’s Success Depends As Much As Anything On His Powers Of Detachment, On De-narcissizing Himself… Freud… Studied His Own Dreams Not Because He Was A “narcissist,” But Because He Was A Student Of Dreams. And Whose Were At Once The Least And Most Accessible Of Dreams, If Not His Own?

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.

Doctor Doctor, What Do You Say, Lets Put The Id Back In Yid

You Can No More Make Someone Tell The Truth Than You Can Force Someone To Love You.

Telling The Truth

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.

I Was A Biography In Constant Motion, Memory To The Marrow Of My Bones.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Think You're A Wonder. You're Beautiful. You're Mature. You Are, I Admit, Vastly More Experienced Than I Am. That's What Threw Me. I Was Thrown. Forgive Me.

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

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?

Nothing Bad Can Happen To A Writer. Everything Is Material.

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

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.

And As He Spoke, I Was Thinking, 'the Kind Of Stories That People Turn Life Into, The Kind Of Lives People Turn Stories Into.

A Jewish Man With Parents Alive Is A Fifteen-year-old Boy, And Will Remain A Fifteen-year-old Boy Until They Die!

Let's Hope The First Comes First.

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

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 Ordeal Is Part Of The Commitment" Esquire Interview 10/10

It's Absolutely Fantastic. When I Was A Kid, My Father Was Always Trying To Tell Me How To Be A Man, And He Said To Me, I Was Maybe 9, And He Said To Me, 'philip, Whenever You Take A Nap, Take Your Clothes Off, Put A Blanket On You, And You're Going To Sleep Better.' Well, As With Everything, He Was Right. ... Then The Best Part Of It Is That When You Wake Up, For The First 15 Seconds, You Have No Idea Where You Are. You're Just Alive. That's All You Know. And It's Bliss, It's Absolute Bliss.

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

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'.

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.

Sheer Playfulness And Deadly Seriousness Are My Closest Friends.

Closest Friends

Eventually The Writing Takes Time. What I Want To Do Is Get The Story Down And I Want To Know What Happens As I Write My Way Into The Knowledge Of The Story.

Everybody Has A Hard Job. All Real Work Is Hard. My Work Happened Also To Be Undoable. Morning After Morning For 50 Years, I Faced The Next Page Defenseless And Unprepared. Writing For Me Was A Feat Of Self-preservation. If I Did Not Do It, I Would Die. So I Did It. Obstinacy, Not Talent, Saved My Life.

What I Have In Mind When I Start To Write Could Fit Inside An Acorn-an Acorn, Moreover, That Rarely If Ever Grows Into An Oak. Write Fiction And You Relinquish Reason. You Start With An Acorn And You End Up With A Mackerel.

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