Quotes from Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

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


About the author

Philip Roth
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date March 19, 1933
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