Philip Roth · 320 pages
Rating: (13.6K votes)
“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.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“I did not want to voice a word that would lift the cover and reveal that hideous emotion I always felt for her, the underside of love.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“How far back must you go to discover the beginning of trouble?”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“Curiously, the darkness seemed to have something to do with Harriet, Ron's intended, and I thought for a time that it was simply the reality of Harriet's arrival that had dramatized the passing of time: we had been talking about it and now suddenly it was here — just as Brenda's departure would be here before we knew it.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“... a nervous, undernourished girl who continually looked down the front of her gown as though there was some sort of construction project going on under her clothes.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“old Blotnik had been mumbling so steadily for so many years, Ozzie suspected he had memorized the prayers and forgotten all about God. “It”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“None of us ate together: my Aunt Gladys ate at five o’clock, my cousin Susan at five-thirty, me at six, and my uncle at six-thirty. There is nothing to explain this beyond the fact that my aunt is crazy.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“We’ll go to the most posh gynecologist in New York. One who gets Harper’s Bazaar for the reception room. How does that sound?”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
“LaHill was a dark, burly fellow whose hair curled out of his clothes wherever it could.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
Philip Roth
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date March 19, 1933
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“If you are here because you think writing will always be fun, you're in for a disappointment. Writing -- real writing -- is among the most difficult work you will ever face in your life. The irony is that the harder you work at it, the harder it gets.”
― M. Molly Backes, quote from The Princesses of Iowa
“Bob was not a young man, and he knew about loss. He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of release. He was not an especially contemplative person, and he did not dwell on this. But by October there were many days when the swell of rightness, loose-limbedness, and gentle gravity came to him. It recalled to him being a child, when he found one day he could finally color within the lines.”
― Elizabeth Strout, quote from The Burgess Boys
“Ours was the kind of dinner conversation one might expect to find in an English-as-a-second-language course or in the babble of a Pentecostal church.”
― Tracy Brogan, quote from Crazy Little Thing
“She embellishes our works, adorning them with her own merits and virtues. It is as if a peasant, wishing to gain the friendship and benevolence of the king, went to the queen and presented her with a fruit which was his whole revenue, in order that she might present it to the king. The queen, having accepted the poor little offering from the peasant, would place the fruit on a large and beautiful dish of gold, and so, on the peasant's behalf, would present it to the king. Then the fruit, however unworthy in itself to be a king's present, would become worthy of his majesty because of the dish of gold on which it rested and the person who presented it.”
― St. Louis de Montfort, quote from True Devotion to Mary
“Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck.
There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past preside of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder's Annual.
Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew's teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley's office, humming.
Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines.
Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn't. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress.
Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.”
― Patricia MacLachlan, quote from The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt
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