Quotes from The Dying Animal

“The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. ”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“These girls with old gents don't do it despite the age—they're drawn to the age, they do it for the age. Why? In Consuela's case, because the vast difference in age gives her permission to submit, I think. My age and my
status give her, rationally, the license to surrender, and surrendering in bed is a not unpleasant sensation. But simultaneously, to give yourself over intimately to a much, much older man provides this sort of younger woman with authority of a kind she cannot get in a sexual arrangement with a younger man. She gets both the pleasures of submission and the pleasures of mastery.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game. A man wouldn't have two-thirds of the problems he has if he didn't venture off to get fucked. It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Like all enjoyable things, you see, it has unenjoyable parts to it.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Who are the new people when you do meet them? They're the same old people in masks.
There's nothing new about them at all. They're people.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Now, I’m very vulnerable to female beauty, as you know. Everybody’s defenseless against something, and that’s it for me. I see it and it blinds me to everything else.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Worship me, she says, worship the mistery of the bleeding goddess, and you do it. You stop at nothing. You lick it. You consume it. You digest it. She penetrates you.
What next, David? A glass of her urine. How long before you would have begged for her feces? I'm not against it because it's unhygienic.
I'm not against it because it's disgusting. I'm against it because it's falling in love. The only obession everybody wants: 'love'. People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. She was a foreign body introduced into your wholeness. And for a year and a half you struggled to incorporate it. But you'll never be whole until you expel it. You either get rid of it or incorporate it through self-distortion.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“To those not yet old, being old means you’ve been. But being old also means that despite, in addition to, and in excess of your beenness, you still are. Your beenness is very much alive. You still are, and one is as haunted by the still-being and its fullness as by the having-already-been, by the pastness. Think of old age this way: it’s just an everyday fact that one’s life is at stake.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“No importa cuánto sepas, no importa cuánto pienses, no importa cuánto maquines, finjas y planees, no estás por encima del sexo. Es un juego muy arriesgado. Uno no tendría dos tercios de los problemas que tiene si no corriera el albur de la jodienda. El sexo es lo que desordena nuestras vidas normalmente ordenadas.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“The loveliest fairy tale of childhood is that everything happens in order.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“فالهاجس الوحيد الذي يرغبه كل فرد : "حب"
أيظن الناس أنهم بالوقوع في الحب يصنعون الاكتمال؟ التوحد الأفلاطوني للأرواح ؟
أعتقد خلاف ذلك .”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“الجسد يحوي الكثيرمن قصص الحياة تماما مثل المخ .

ــــــ إدنا أوه براين”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“إن شك المرء ، سخريته ، الإحساس السليم السياسي الثقافي ، الذي يحفظه بعيدا عن التحركات الجماعية ، كان درعا واقيا .”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Упадок и Возвышение Презерватива — так бы я окрестил историю сексуальности во второй половине XX столетия.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Каждая новая выходка не прибавляет мне сил, а, напротив, отнимает последние, а я все не унимаюсь”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Но если бы мы взялись обсудить эту проблему хотя бы с теми же собаками, наверняка узнали бы, что и в их среде встречаются — пусть и в несколько упрощенной форме — эти чудовищные извращения: персонифицированное желание, слепая привязанность, стремление к безраздельному обладанию и даже любовь.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“Non troppi anni fa c'era un modo prefabbricato di essere vecchi, proprio come c'era un modo prefabbricato di essere giovani. Non sono più in vigore, né l'uno né l'altro. Sul permissibile c'è stata una grande lotta; e un grande ribaltamento. Nondimeno, un uomo di settantanni dovrebbe ancora lasciarsi coinvolgere nell'aspetto carnale della commedia umana? Essere, senz'alcuna contrizione, un vecchio secolare ancora sensibile a ciò che di umanamente eccitante lo circonda? Non è la condizione che una volta era simboleggiata dalla pipa e dalla sedia a dondolo. Forse è ancora un po' un affronto, per la gente, rifiutarsi di ubbidire al vecchio orologio della vita. Capisco di non poter contare sul virtuoso rispetto degli altri adulti. Ma cosa posso farci se, per quello che mi riguarda, non ci si mette mai l'animo in pace, mai, per vecchio che uno sia?”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

“«Да и откуда им взяться, новым людям? Они только с виду новые. А на самом деле всё те же старые, только надели маску. В них нет и не может быть никакой новизны. Они люди, а люди, они и есть люди!»”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal

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― Michel Foucault, quote from Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

“Dawns in the dormitory had a suspicious resemblance to happiness.”
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“You want that girl you left behind. I’m not her! Don’t you get it? She’s gone. I’ve lost her. I made choices that made me an awful person. I’m not worth all this time and energy you’re wasting.”
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