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1926844
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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.
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Philip Roth |
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6cb7db4
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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.
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guilt
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Philip Roth |
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c8c564f
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He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again. It is artificial and, even then, bought at the price of an obstinate estrangement from oneself and one's history.
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Philip Roth |
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9f12870
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other people's weakness can destroy you just as much as their strength can. Weak people are not harmless. Their weakness can be their strength.
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Philip Roth |
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6a5e46e
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What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would have once have felt sorry for. It was as though while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn't wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down t..
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Philip Roth |
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3d27206
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Come se nel cuore della natura di uno scrittore ci fosse la purezza. Il cielo aiuti un simile scrittore! Come se Joyce non avesse annusato oscenamente le mutande di Nora. Come se nell'anima di Dostoevskij non avesse mai bisbigliato Svidrigailov. Nel cuore della natura di uno scrittore c'e il capriccio. Curiosita, fissazioni, isolamento, veleno, feticismo, austerita, leggerezza, perplessita, infantilismo eccetera. Il naso nella cucitura di u..
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Philip Roth |
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56c79f8
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I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off - the sticky evidence is everywhere!
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Philip Roth |
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ce9c757
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Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.
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Philip Roth |
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4456c35
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I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones.
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Philip Roth |
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fa87eaf
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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 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. And if I knock off from this ro..
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Philip Roth |
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ea0f0f5
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So. Now you know the worst thing I have ever done. I fucked my own family's dinner.
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Philip Roth |
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e5491b6
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It's a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, "Momma, do we believe in winter?"
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Philip Roth |
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4d7e80f
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Oh, to be a center fielder, a center fielder- and nothing more
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Philip Roth |
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e0a106e
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A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!
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self-doubt
infant
jewish
manhood
insecurity
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Philip Roth |
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0b5ccc5
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Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? 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..
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Philip Roth |
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e83aa57
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The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy--that is every man's tragedy.
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tragedy
loneliness
existence
roth
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Philip Roth |
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7e61b78
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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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Philip Roth |
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6722eab
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Lotti contro la tua superficialita, la tua faciloneria, per cercare di accostarti alla gente senza aspettative illusorie, senza un carico eccessivo di pregiudizi, di speranze o di arroganza, nel modo meno simile a quello di un carro armato, senza cannoni, mitragliatrici e corazze d'acciaio spesse quindici centimetri; offri alla gente il tuo volto piu bonario, camminando in punta di piedi invece di sconvolgere il terreno con i cingoli, e l'a..
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Philip Roth |
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d7eb05e
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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 t..
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Philip Roth |
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6dc9d4d
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Who are the new people when you do meet them? They're the same old people in masks. There's nothing new about them at all. They're people.
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Philip Roth |
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4f5203d
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Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress--probably had never even begun to see into himself
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intelligence
social-intelligence
know-thyself
loyalty
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Philip Roth |
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40598a4
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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. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you.
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Philip Roth |
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739c8c0
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In my parents' day and age, it used to be the person who fell short. Now it's the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it's the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can't learn it, so there is something wrong with it. And there is something especially wrong with the bad teacher who wants to teach it. There are no more criteria, Mr. Zuckerman, only opinions.
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education
humanities
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Philip Roth |
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49b23d1
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There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty and Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.
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father
human-nature
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Philip Roth |
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6d6ad9e
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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 fears.
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Philip Roth |
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2791d91
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As for himself, however hateful life was, it was hateful in a home and not in the gutter. Many Americans hated their homes. The number of homeless in America couldn't touch the number of Americans who had homes and families and hated the whole thing.
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Philip Roth |
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e04ea33
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Who are they now? They are the simplest version possible of themselves... They are out from under everything ever piled on top of them.
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Philip Roth |
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72abd7a
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Oh Mickey, it was wonderful, it was fun - the whole kitten and kaboozle. It was like living. And to be denied that whole part would be a great loss. You gave it to me. You gave me a double life. I couldn't have endured with just one." I'm proud of you and your double life." All I regret", she said, crying again, crying with him, the two of them in tears..."is that we couldn't sleep together too many nights. To commingle with you. Commingle?..
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Philip Roth |
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298df70
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This is what you know about someone you have to hate: he charges you with his crime and castigates himself in you.
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hate
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Philip Roth |
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1356129
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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
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Philip Roth |
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702bcfc
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Religion is the opiate of the people!
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Philip Roth |
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79ddd38
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I can lie about my name, I can lie about my school, but how am I going to lie about this fucking nose? "You seem like a very nice person Mr. Porte-Noir, but why do you go around covering the middle of your face like that?" Because suddenly it has taken off, the middle of my face! Because gone is the button of my childhood years, that pretty little thing that people used to look at in my carriage, and lo and behold, the middle of my face has..
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jew
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Philip Roth |
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ee8f15f
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Either foreswear fucking others or the affair is over.
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Philip Roth |
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d9561bb
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Now, I'm very vulnerable to female beauty, as you know. Everybody's defenseless against something, and that's it for me. I see it and it blinds me to everything else.
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Philip Roth |
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b2a21f6
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It's so heartbreaking, violence, when it's in a house-like seeing the clothes in a tree after an explosion. You may be prepared to see death but not the clothes in the tree.
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Philip Roth |
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d369727
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And how long will the American people stand for this treachery perpetrated by their elected president? How long will Americans remain asleep while their cherished Constitution is torn to shreds
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Philip Roth |
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408fa18
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Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, "Why are things the way they are?" Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn't even know the question existed."
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Philip Roth |
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2fd519e
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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 bri..
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Philip Roth |
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e4ace92
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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.
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Philip Roth |
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c940431
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It was my job not just to pluck the chickens but to eviscerate them. I hated that part. Nauseating and disgusting, but it had to be done. That's what I learned from my father and what I loved learning from him: that you do what you have to do.
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Philip Roth |
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759de67
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But they don't deserve to be winning!" "And who does in this world, Roland? Only the gifted and the beautiful and the brave? What about the rest of us, Champ? What about the wretched, for example? What about the weak and the lowly and the desperate and the fearful and the deprived, to name but a few who come to mind? What about losers? What about failures? What about the ordinary fucking outcasts of this world - who happen to comprise ninet..
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Philip Roth |
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6c7d39b
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You think you know what a man is? You have no idea what a man is. You think you know what a daughter is? You have no idea what a daughter is. You think you know what this country is? You have no idea what this country is. You have a false image of everything. All you know is what a fucking glove is. This country is frightening. Of course she was raped. What kind of company do you think she was keeping? Of course out there she was going to g..
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Philip Roth |
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5ea38f1
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People are unjust to anger -- it can be enlivening and a lot of fun.
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Philip Roth |
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f208c4d
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he walked away understanding, (...) how easily life can be one thing rather than another and how accidentally a destiny is made... on the other hand, how accidental fate may seem when things can never turn out other than they do.
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Philip Roth |