Quote of the Day

In most professions there's a beginning, a middle, and an end.  With writing, it's always beginning again.  Temperamentally, we need that newness.  There is a lot of repetition in the work.  In fact, one skill that every writer needs is the ability to sit still in this deeply uneventful business.

-- Philip Roth

Quote of the Day

Writing isn't hard work, it's a nightmare.

-- Philip Roth

Philip Roth:

And there's far less vindictiveness than is imagined on the part of the writer who writes about somebody's secret than just this sort of stupid, childish awe of the human fact of it.  So, it isn't so much that one is pious about one's self or pious about being a writer and say, "Well, I have to be honest."  It's not that at all.  It's you're hypnotized, you're mesmerized, you're fascinated by the thing in itself and you want to present it.

NPR's Fresh Air, May 8, 2000

Philip Roth:

There's an awful lot of stupid, childish awe in writers.  People may think that you're trying to reveal their secrets.  You're sort of dumbstruck by their secrets and by your own, of course, too.

NPR's Fresh Air, May 8, 2000

Philip Roth:

There's no novelist worth his or her salt who isn't fascinated by the real and whose job is founded and grounded in this fascination with the real thing.

NPR's Fresh Air, May 8, 2000