Philip Roth Quotes

There have been times that I have found myself in places, and I don't know how I got there, and I don't actually know where I am.

I've always operated so far outside my lane, I'm not sure what lane is mine anymore.

Did you ever look in the mirror And see a stranger standing there? Did you ever drive for miles and miles And wonder how on earth you got yourself there?

I think I'm confused, but I'm not sure!

Am I lost or just less found?

I tend toward characters who are more lost than found.

Being a kid, as all kids do, you feel out of place or like kind of a freak. You wake up feeling like your head got put onto someone else's body that day.

Most of my films seem to be about people bewildered by the world around them, who don't fit into it and are trying to understand it.

You suddenly find yourself somewhere and you wonder, how did I get in this room? That happens to me all the time, every day!

I am not a man. I am not a human being inside. I am not that. I don't know what I am, but I am not that.

I'm not usually where I think I am. It's kind of spooky.

I think it should be evident by now, but I'm as lost as anyone.

Even though my parents were famous actors, I honestly felt most of the time that I didn't understand what was going on.

We are anxious because we do not know what roles to pursue, what principles for action to believe in. Our individual anxiety, somewhat like that of the nation, is a basic confusion and bewilderment about where we are going.

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.

There are yawning gulfs into which large chunks of me have fallen. I do not always know where I am at present.

The meanings get lost and the teachings get tossed and you don't know what you're going to do next.

I ran rather than walked, anxious to lose my way. All I wanted was to be unsure.

…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.

Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping

After that, she wasn't sure what the game was or if she'd imagined it. All she knew was that she had lost.

My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.

You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That’s the feeling.

You described the feeling you’d always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why.

I can very much relate to waking up inside of your life and saying to yourself, "How did I get here?"