Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on. Philip Roth Read Quote
I work all day, morning and afternoon, just about every day. If I sit there like that for two or three years, at the end I have a book. Philip Roth Read Quote
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. Philip Roth Read Quote
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. Philip Roth Read Quote
Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when. Philip Roth Read Quote
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. Philip Roth Read Quote
My goal would be to find a big, fat subject that would occupy me to the end of my life, and when I finish it, I’ll die. What’s agony is starting; I hate starting them. I just want to keep writing now and end when it ends. Philip Roth Read Quote
I’m not good at finding ‘encouraging’ features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here. Philip Roth Read Quote
For all I know, I am beginning with the ending. My page one can wind up a year later as page two hundred, if it’s still even around. Philip Roth Read Quote