“He is not simply looking into the mirror because he is transfixed by what he sees. Rather, the artist’s success depends as much as anything on his powers of detachment, on de-narcissizing himself… Freud… studied his own dreams not because he was a “narcissist,” but because he was a student of dreams. And whose were at once the least and most accessible of dreams, if not his own?”
― Philip Roth, quote from My Life as a Man
“I would browse for half an hour or so in the secondhand bookstores in the neighborhood. Owning my own 'library' was my only materialistic ambition; in fact, trying to decide which two of these thousands of books to buy that week, I would frequently get so excited that by the time the purchase was accomplished I had to make use of the bookseller's toilet facilities. I don't believe that either microbe or laxative has ever affected me so strongly as the discovery that I was all at once the owner of a slightly soiled copy of Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity in the original English edition.”
― Philip Roth, quote from My Life as a Man
“As far as I can see there is no conquering or exorcising the past with words - words born either of imagination or forthrightness.”
― Philip Roth, quote from My Life as a Man
“I think I should learn to get along better with people," he explained to Miss Benson one day, when she came upon him in the corridor of the literature building and asked what he was doing wearing a fraternity pledge pin (wearing it on the chest of the new V-neck pullover in which his mother said he looked so collegiate). Miss Benson's response to his proposed scheme for self-improvement was at once so profound and so simply put that Zuckerman went around for days repeating the simple interrogative sentence to himself; like Of Times and the River, it verified something he had known in his bones all along, but in which he could not placed his faith until it had been articulated by someone of indisputable moral prestige and purity : "Why," Caroline Benson asked the seventeen-year-old boy, "should you want to learn a thing like that?”
― Philip Roth, quote from My Life as a Man
“Though frankly… Tarnapol, as he is called, is beginning to seem as imaginary as my Zuckermans anyway, or at least as detached from the memoir-ist – his revelations coming to seem like still another “useful fiction,” and not because I am telling lies. I am trying to keep to the facts. Maybe all I’m saying is that words, being words, only approximate the real thing, and so no matter how close I come, I only come close.”
― Philip Roth, quote from My Life as a Man
Philip Roth
Born place: in Newark, New Jersey, The United States
Born date March 19, 1933
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“Will you marry me?"
Jocelyn's forehead dropped against the window. It was a wonder her legs didn't give out. She felt such unbelievable relief on hearing those words, and such ecstasy washing over her — and he'd made her suffer for three weeks while he made up his mind.
"I don't know," she said in a perfectly normal tone, though she didn't know how she managed it. "The countess says one shouldn't marry her lover. Ruins the romance, you know."
"Am I still your lover?"
"If you are, you've been a very inattentive one."
He kissed the pout from her lips, slowly, persuasively. "What if you marry me for the hell of it, but we pretend we're just lovers?"
"That sounds rather nice, especially since lovers tend to love each other."
"And married folks don't?"
"Not always."
"I won't have any problem with that."
"You won't?"
"Don't look so surprised, Duchess. Did you think I was after your money?"
She was chagrined by his grin, and snorted, "You'll probably ask me to give it all away."
"I might."
"And live in a cabin in the hills."
"I might."
"And have your babies and wash your clothes."
"I'd like to keep my clothes intact, and I warn you now, you're not getting anywhere near my stove. I guess you'll have to have a few servants around after all."
"And the babies?"
"You want some?"
"Most definitely."
"I guess that means you love me, huh?"
"Or I just like your body. Did I tell you what a splendid— Yes!" she squealed when he squeezed her tight. "I love you, you wretched man.”
― Johanna Lindsey, quote from Savage Thunder
“I shoulda taken ya into town, Missie. Gave ya a chance to see the outside world again, to visit an' chat. I missed yer need, Missie, an'-an' ya never complain-jest let me go on, makin' dumb mistakes right an' left. A sorry-looking bunch of cowpokes, a work-crazy husband an' a baby who can't say more than 'goo' ain't much fer company. Yet ya never, never say a thing 'bout it. I love you, too, Missie-so very much.”
― Janette Oke, quote from Love's Long Journey
“Open," he urged her in a soft voice.
Samson to Delilah”
― Tina Folsom, quote from Samson's Lovely Mortal
“When humans work, they frequently become unaware of their own body, their own senses, are surprised to find that their wrists ache or their backs are sore or their friend has left the building. It's as close to an out-of-body experience as can be achieved short of fifty volts, a circle of warding, a pigeon's claw cut from an albino female of purest white feathers, or a lot of mushrooms.”
― Kate Griffin, quote from A Madness of Angels
“How foolish was the fox. How blind. To not see, not value the friendship, the affection, the trust the brown bird offered him.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Girl in the Gatehouse
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