The best quotes by the author we have brought to you
“Even a monster has to be from somewhere—even a monster needs parents. But parents don’t need monsters.” (American Pastoral Quotes)
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again. It is artificial and, even then, bought at the price of an obstinate estrangement from oneself and one’s history.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“Life is just a short period of time in which we are alive.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“People were standing up everywhere shouting, “This is me! This is me!” Every time you looked at them they stood up and told you who they were, and the truth of it was that they had no more idea who or what they were than he had. They believed their flashing signs, too. They ought to be standing up and shouting, “This isn’t me! This isn’t me!” They would if they had any decency. “This isn’t me!” Then you might know how to proceed through the flashing bullshit of this world.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“The goal was to have goals, the aim to have aims. This edict came entangled often in hysteria, the embattled hysteria of those whom experience had taught how little antagonism it takes to wreck a life beyond repair.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“This man did not deal in fairy tales. You could see that as soon as you walked into his office. Schevitz was somebody who liked to be proved right, somebody whose wish to prevail was his vocation.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“Writing turns you into somebody who’s always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“You go to someone and you think, ‘I’ll tell him this.’ But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that’s why you feel awful later-you’ve relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it’s not better, it’s worse—the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
“You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn’t annihilate human nature.”
Philip Roth
American Pastoral
