Philip Roth - Write Quotes

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I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.

Philip Roth

I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

Philip Roth

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again...

Philip Roth

Should he ever write an autobiography, he'd call it The Life and Death of a Male Body.

Philip Roth

I was trying to solve the problem of this book. (My Life as a Man) When it seemed I never would, I stopped and wrote Our Gang; when I tried again and still couldn't write it, I stopped and wrote the baseball book; then while finishing the baseball book, I stopped to write The Breast. It was as though I were blasting my way through a tunnel to reach the novel I couldn't write. Each of one's books is a blast, clearing the way for what's next.

Philip Roth