Philip Roth Quotes

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

Naturally, the reader has access only to the events I show and the way I show them, but as has been said, there's generally a good deal of ambiguity in that presentation.

I don't believe that my first name is Leo or that my last name is Tolstoy. I'm a storyteller.

I want young readers to know that to tell their own story is the most important thing they'll ever do.

Of all forms of fiction, autobiography is the most gratuitous.

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

A world view is probably an expression of self.

I wish I didn't have ever to sign my long name on the cover of a book, and I wish I could write a story that would seem absolutely true to the child who hears it and to myself.

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

Everything I write is about me.

I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words.

I try to avoid describing one interpretation of my books. Of course I have an opinion. I have things I want to say, but I don't ever want to limit anybody, to have them say, 'Oh, he said this, so that's what it's about.' I'm happy people bring their own stuff to it.

One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it's not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.

Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters and journals to work with.

Oftentimes I deliberately put ambiguity into my books so that... the reader is left with an echo of: 'How much of this was from me?'

I don't know what 'normal' means, anyway.

Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.

Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.

I'm only interested in fiction that in some way or other voices the very imagination which is conceiving it.

As far as I am concerned, I write novels, and other people can do the labelling.

The 'Glass' is not my autobiography, nor is it self-expression. Far from it.

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

We're always just telling stories, and stories are always just approximations of the truth. It's never the truth exactly.

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction.