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.
("American Pastoral")
More Quotes from 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 admirationPhilip Roth
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.
Philip Roth
Only in America 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 pedal pushers 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.
Philip Roth
Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.
Philip Roth
I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones.
Philip Roth
The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
Philip Roth
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Fate & Destiny QuotesBased on Keywords: reconsideration, that-well
I'm not against watching myself, but I miss a lot of it. I've got two little kids who we don't let watch TV.
William H. Macy
Being involved in the well-being and advancement of one's own community is a most natural thing to do.
Clarence Clemons
God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
Alfred Korzybski