Quotes from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“Better for real things to be uncontrollable, better for one's life to be undecipherable and intellectually impenetrable than to attempt to make casual sense of what is unknown with a fantasy that is mad. Better, I thought, that the events of these past three days should remain incomprehensible to me forever than to posit, as I had just been doing, a conspiracy of foreign intelligence agents who are determined to control my mind. We've all heard that one before.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“Everything dictated silence and self-control but I couldn't restrain myself and spoke my mind.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“Where everything is words, you'd think I'd have some mastery and know my way around, but all this churning hatred, each man a verbal firing squad, immeasurable suspicions, a flood of mocking, angry talk, all of life a vicious debate, conversations in which there is nothing that cannot be said...no, I'd be better off in the jungle, I thought, where a roar's a roar and no one is hard put to miss its meaning.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“...they'll say, 'He never recovered from that breakdown and this was the result. It had to be the breakdown--not even he was that dreadful a novelist.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“...Don't tell me he's bisexual! Don't tell me this is more of the guy in the hallway! Don't tell me he wants us to have it off together, Philip Roth fucking Philip Roth! That, I'm afraid, is a form of masturbation too fancy even for me.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“But I never did escape from this plot-driven world into a more congenial, subtly probable, innerly propelled narrative of my own devising--didn't make it to the airport,...--and that was because in the taxi I remembered a political cartoon I'd seen in the British papers when I was living in London during the Lebanon war, a detestable cartoon of a big-nosed Jew, his hands meekly opened out in front of him and his shoulders raised in a shrug as though to disavow responsibility, standing atop a pyramid of dead Arab bodies. Purportedly a caricature of Menachem Begin, then prime minister of Israel, the drawing was, in fact, a perfectly realistic, unequivocal depiction of a kike as classically represented in the Nazi press. The cartoon was what turned me around. Barely ten minutes out of Jerusalem, I told the driver to take me back to the King David Hotel.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“This is the plot up to the moment when the writer leaves the woman still dolefully enmeshed in it, and, suitcase in hand, tiptoeing so as not to disturb her postcoital rest, he himself slips silently out of the plot on the grounds of its general implausibility, a total lack of gravity, reliance at too many key points on unlikely coincidence, an absence of inner coherence, and not even the most tenuous evidence of anything resembling a serious meaning or purpose. The story so far is frivolously plotted, overplotted, for his taste altogether too freakishly plotted, with outlandish events so wildly careening around every corner that there is nowhere for intelligence to establish a foothold and develop a perspective. As if the look-alike at the story's storm center isn't farfetched enough, there is the capricious loss of the Smilesburger check (there is the fortuitous appearance of the Smilesburger check; there is Louis B. Smilesburger himself, Borscht Belt deus ex machina), which sets the action on its unconvincing course and serves to reinforce the writer's sense that the story has been intentionally conceived as a prank, and a nasty prank at that, considering the struggles of Jewish existence that are said to be at issue by his antagonist.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“It was not for me, after these last seventy-two hours, to reject as too outlandish the possibility that the situation for him here had driven George crazy. Yet I did reject it. It was just too insipid a conclusion. Not everybody was cray. Resolute is not crazy. Deluded is not crazy. To be thwarted, vengeful, terrified, treacherous--this is not to be crazy. Not even fanatically held illusions are crazy, and deceit certainly isn't crazy--deceit, deviousness, cunning, cynicism, all of that is far from crazy...and there, that, deceit, there was the key to my confusion. Of course!”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“...I finally went back to my seat in the second row and sat there doing what I've done throughout my professional life: I tried to think, first, how to make credible a somewhat extreme, if not outright ridiculous story, and, next, how, after telling it, to fortify and defend myself from the affronted who read into the story an intention having perhaps to do less with the author's perversity than with their own.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“Would that I were still a ludicrous character in his lousy book!”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“Look, I've got more personalities than I can use already. All you are is one too many.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“I suppose I should have laughed even more uproariously at what happened next; as a newly anointed convert to the Old Comedy, I should have bounded to my feet, cried aloud, "Hallelujah!" and sung the praises of He Who Created Us, He Who Formed Us from the Mud, the One and Only Comic Almighty, OUR SOVEREIGN REDEEMER ARISTOPHANES, but for reasons all too profane (total mental paralysis) I could only gape at the sight of nothing less than the highly entertaining Aristophanic erection that Pipik had produced....”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“I left the front stoop on Leslie Street, ate of the fruit of the tree of fiction, and nothing, neither reality nor myself, has been the same since.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“Nothing could appear to be more human than refusing to believe extinction possible so long as you were encircled by luscious eggplants and ripe tomatoes[..]”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“I understood that people are trying to transform themselves all the time: the universal urge to be otherwise. So as not to look as they look, sound as they sound, be treated as they are treated, suffer in the ways they suffer, etc., etc., they change hairdos, tailors, spouses, accents, friends, they change their addresses, their noses, their wallpaper, even their forms of government, all to be more like themselves or less like themselves, or more like or less like that exemplary prototype whose image is theirs to emulate or to repudiate obsessively for life.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“I’m looking at myself,” he said, ecstatically, “except it’s you.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“don’t care why we have it, we are here to admit that we have it and help each other get rid of it.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

“Could he continue to maintain his sanity that long? He didn't know. That's why he was devouring two or three books a day - to remove himself every minute that he possibly could from the madness of this life.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession

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Popular quotes

“What is any public question but a conglomeration of private interests? What is any newspaper article but an expression of the views taken by one side? Truth! it takes an age to ascertain the truth of any question! The idea of Tom Towers talking of public motives and purity of purpose!”
― Anthony Trollope, quote from The Warden

“Come here, she said. "I need to hold someone, and you need to be held. It's a fair trade. Just for a little while, and then we can go on being what we are.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from An Artificial Night

“Reden wir über Schmerz. Schmerz ist eine Form von Energie. Er kann erzeugt werden wie Elektrizität. Er kann fließen wie Strom. Er kann gleichmäßig sein oder pulsierend. Er kann stark und überwältigend sein, oder schwach und störend. Schmerz kann einen Mann zum Reden bringen. Was viele Menschen nicht wissen - Schmerz kann einen Mann zum Nachdenken bringen. Er kann einen Menschen nach seinem Abbild formen. Er kann ihn zu dem machen, was er selbst ist. Ich kenne den Schmerz. Ich habe ihn verstanden. Er hat mich Dinge gelehrt. Zum Beispiel, dass die Menschen ihn fürchten. Zugleich können sie viel mehr Schmerzen ertragen, als sie glauben. Wenn ich dir beispielsweise sage, dass ich dir eine Nadel in den Arm ramme, wirst du Angst bekommen. Wenn ich es tatsächlich tue, wird der Schmerz unerträglich sein. Aber wenn ich es wieder tue, und wieder und wieder, jede Stunde, ein ganzes Jahr lang, wirst du dich daran gewöhnen. Es wird dir niemals gefallen, doch du fürchtest dich auch nicht mehr davor. Genau darum geht es.”
― Cody McFadyen, quote from The Face of Death

“I know you've got your guns and you're really good at being horrible to people, but do you seriously think you can threaten him?"
Milo frowned. "I'm not horrible to people."
"Really? You really don't think you're horrible to people?"
"No," he said, a little defensively. "I'm nice. Everyone says it."
"Oh man," said Amber. "People have lied to you. Like, a lot.”
― Derek Landy, quote from Demon Road

“remaining tent to find Cerys alone at the fold-up”
― Angela Marsons, quote from Silent Scream

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.