But to wish oneself into another's glory, as boy or as man, is an impossibility, untenable on psychological grounds if you are not a writer, and on aesthetic grounds if you are.
("American Pastoral")
More Quotes from Philip Roth:
The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.Philip Roth
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
Philip Roth
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.
Philip Roth
My God The English language is a form of communication Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill Words aren't only bombs and bullets no, they're little gifts, containing meanings
Philip Roth
That people were manifold creatures didn't come as a surprise to the Swede, even if it was a bit of a shock to realize it anew when someone let you down. 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 once have felt sorry for
Philip Roth
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.
Philip Roth
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Man Quotes, Success QuotesTomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.
Aulus Persius Flaccus
Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols, coding and debugging, testing and refactoring.
Jesse James Garrett
I have always believed that I should have had no difficulty in causing my rights to be respected.
Eli Whitney