Philip Roth Quotes

I don't watch a lot of other people's parodies because I don't want to be unduly influenced.

When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.

I take no notice of the trends. It has never concerned me at all. My job is to deal with what I want to deal with and reach an audience by doing so.

Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

Those who most obstinately oppose the most widely-held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want back seats.

If you want to make order, put your own heart in order, and, having put one's heart in order, one can regulate the family order.

So, what is creative freedom? We can make what we want, how we want. The only constraint is: not for any budget.

In the music industry, it's pretty easy to make an album just because you want to keep going, like, 'This is the formula.' But the formula is your life. You have to live your life and you have to live it well - that's the formula.

I love it when celebrities fall apart, you want them to fall apart like Charlie Sheen.

I don't really want to talk about my personal experience. It's something that I have talked about just because it came out in the press but I've tried to navigate the waters in my own comfort-ability.

One must not imitate what one wants to create.

I get a lot of work done in my dreams and I don't want to take anybody else's work with me.

You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"

If we want a better original idea, we must generate our own before we screen others' suggestions.

I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.

I don't want to fall. All I want to do is stand on solid ground.

If you want to be different, do something different.

You don't want it to be a replica or an imitation. You want to create something fresh, original, very unique.

That I happened to fall into a career that no other girls wanted isn't surprising to me. I wanted something that didn't exist, so I had to create it.

On one hand it's very flattering to be compared to a big success, and then sometimes it's very frustrating because you want people to see the movie that you're making and not be continually comparing it to something that it's not. So it goes both ways.

There are no gatekeepers. So all the things we want people to cast us in, we can just make ourselves.

If you're purely derivative in what you do, then you could very easily get lost along the way. But for me, I might want to even do something else for a while.

I don't want to do an edgy show, I didn't want bad language. I think edginess is the new hackiness.

As crises came up later on - "Oh, we have to compromise, and the record company wants to do this," I'd be like, "No, I don't have to."

I'm interested in making a path instead of following a trail, and that's what I want to do in life - in everything I do.