I Married a Communist Quotes

“As an artist the nuance is your task. Your task is not to simplify. Even should you choose to write in the simplest way, a la Hemingway, the task remains to impart the nuance, to elucidate the complication, to imply the contradiction. Not to erase the contradiction, not to deny the contradiction, but to see where, within the contradiction, lies the tormented human being. To allow for the chaos, to let it in. You must let it in. Otherwise you produce propaganda, if not for a political party, a political movement, then stupid propaganda for life itself -- for life as it might itself prefer to be publicized.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Look, everything the Communists say about capitalism is true, and everything the capitalists say about Communism is true. The difference is, our system works because it's based on the truth about people's selfishness, and theirs doesn't because it's based on a fairy tale about people's brotherhood. It's such a crazy fairy tale they've got to take people and put them in Siberia in order to get them to believe it.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Politics is the great generalizer and literature the great particularizer, and not only are they in an inverse relationship to each other---they are in an antagonistic relationship.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“If the weather isn't bad and it's a clear night, I spend fifteen or twenty minutes before bedtime out on the deck looking skyward, or, using a flashlight, I pick my way along the dirt road to the open pasture at the peak of my hill, from where I can see, from above the treeline, the whole heavenly inventory, stars unfurled in every direction, and, just this week, the planets Jupiter in the east and Mars in the west. It is beyond belief and also a fact, a plain and indisputable face: that we are born, that this is here. I can think of worse ways to end my day.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“But that’s what happens. Once the human tragedy has been completed, it gets turned over to the journalists to banalize into entertainment. Perhaps it’s because the whole irrational frenzy burst right through our door and no newspaper’s half-baked insinuating detail passed me by that I think of the McCarthy era as inaugurating the postwar triumph of gossip as the unifying credo of the world’s oldest democratic republic. In Gossip We Trust. Gossip as gospel, the national faith. McCarthyism as the beginning not just of serious politics but of serious everything as entertainment to amuse the mass audience. McCarthyism as the first postwar flowering of the American unthinking that is now everywhere.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Maybe, despite ideology, politics, and history, a genuine catastrophe is always personal bathos at the core. Life can’t be impugned for any failure to trivialize people. You have to take your hat off to life for the techniques at its disposal to strip a man of his significance and empty him totally of his pride.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Anger is to make you effective. That’s its survival function. That’s why it’s given to you. If it makes you ineffective, drop it like a hot potato.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“And talking about books as though something were at stake in a book. Not opening up a book to worship it or be elevated by it or to lose yourself to the world around you. No, boxing with the book.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Why, emotionally, is a man of his type reciprocally connected to a woman of her type? The usual reason: their flaws fit.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“My father was taking me as seriously as the Ringolds were, but not with Ira’s political fearlessness, with Murray’s literary ingenuity, above all, with their seeming absence of concern for my decorum, for whether I would or would not be a good boy. The Ringolds were the one-two punch promising to initiate me into the big show, into my beginning to understand what it takes to be a man on the larger scale. The Ringolds compelled me to respond at a level of rigor that felt appropriate to who I now was. Be a good boy wasn’t the issue with them. The sole issue was my convictions. But then, their responsibility wasn’t a father’s, which is to steer his son away from the pitfalls. The father has to worry about the pitfalls in a way the teacher doesn’t. He has to worry about his son’s conduct, he has to worry about socializing his little Tom Paine. But once little Tom Paine has been let into the company of men and the father is still educating him as a boy, the father is finished. Sure, he’s worrying about the pitfalls—if he wasn’t, it would be wrong. But he’s finished anyway. Little Tom Paine has no choice but to write him off, to betray the father and go boldly forth to step straight into life’s very first pit. And then, all on his own—providing real unity to his existence—to step from pit to pit for the rest of his days, until the grave, which, if it has nothing else to recommend it, is at least the last pit into which one can fall.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“It’s not being angry that’s important, it’s being angry about the right things. I told her, Look at it from the Darwinian perspective. Anger is to make you effective. That’s its survival function. That’s why it’s given to you. If it makes you ineffective, drop it like a hot potato.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“He has outlived dissatisfaction. This is what remains after the passing of everything, the disciplined sadness of stoicism. This is the cooling. For so long it’s so hot, everything in life is so intense, and then little by little it goes away, and then comes the cooling, and then comes the ashes.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“الكذب،نهر الأكاذيب.ترجمة الحقيقة إلى أكذوبة.ترجمة كذبة إلى كذبة أخرى.الكفاءة التي يعرضها الناس في كذبهم.المهارة.استغلال الموقف بدقة،ومن ثم بصوت هادئ ووجه صارم،تقديم أكبر كذبة مثمرة.حتى لو قالوا الحقيقة الجزئية تسع مرات من عشر،فهذا بالنيابة عن كذبة.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“تحت التعذيب القاسي،لا يستطيع الإنسان العادي أن يقاوم.إن البطولة هي استثناء إنساني.فالشخص الذي يعيش حياة طبيعية مصنوعة من آلاف التنازلات اليومية الصغيرة،غير مدرب مطلقا على عدم التنازل الفجائي،ناهيك عن تحمل التعذيب.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“هل تعرف واحدة من أفضل مشاعر الحياة وربما أفضلها على الإطلاق؟ألا تكون خائفا.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“انظر،كل شيء يقوله الشيوعيون عن الرأسمالية هو صحيح،وكل شيء يقوله الرأسماليون عن الشيوعية هو صحيح.إن الفرق هو أن نظامنا ناجح لأنه قائم على الصدق فيما يتعلق بأنانية الناس،ونظامهم فاشل لأنه قائم على الحكاية الأسطورية حول تآخي الناس.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“إنه جريء.لكن هل هذا يكفي؟هذا فقط جزء من المعادلة.ينبغي أن يكون للجرأة هدف،وإلا ستكون رخيصة وسطحية ومبتذلة.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“ما الذي يمكن أن يكون أكثر ثباتا من التفاهة والخسة؟
هل التفاهة والخسة تقفان في طريق الدهاء والصرامة؟
هل التفاهة والخسة تبطلان الهدف من أن تكون شخصية هامة؟
أنت لا تحتاج إلى جهة نظر متطورة عن الحياة من أجل أن تعتلي السلطة.فرؤية متطورة للحياة ربما تكون في الحقيقة أسوأ عائق،بينما عدم وجود رؤية متطورة أروع ميزة.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“وباسم المنطق،أنت تبحث عن حافز ما أعلى،أنت تبحث عن معنى آخر أكثر عمقا.كانت عادتي في تلك الأيام ما زالت هي أن أكون منطقيا فيما يتعلق بما هو غير منطقي،وأن أبحث عن التعقيد في الأشياء البسيطة.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Ma appena desideri appassionatamente una cosa sulla quale non puoi esercitare alcun controllo, sei alla vigilia di una grossa delusione: ti stai preparando a farti mettere in ginocchio.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“...steeped like a teabag in aristocratic pretensions...”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“If the weather isn't bad and it's a clear night, I spend fifteen or twenty minutes before bedtime out on the deck looking skyward, or, using a flashlight, I pick my way along the dirt road to the open pasture at the peak of my hill, from where I can see, from above the treeline, the whole heavenly inventory, stars unfurled in every direction, and, just this week, the planets Jupiter in the east and Mars in the west. It is beyond belief and also a fact, a plain and indisputable fact: that we are born, that this is here. I can think of worse ways to end my day.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“herself.”
― Philip Roth, I Married A Communist

“Professionals who've spent their energy teaching masterpieces, the few of us still engrossed by literature's scrutiny of things, have no excuse for finding betrayal anywhere but at the heart of history. History from top to bottom. World history, family history, personal history. It's a very big subject, betrayal. Just think of the Bible. What's that book about? The master story situation of the Bible is betrayal. Adam—betrayed. Esau—betrayed. The Shechemite—betrayed. Judah—betrayed. Joseph—betrayed. Moses—betrayed. Samson—betrayed. Samuel—betrayed. David—betrayed. Uriah—betrayed. Job—betrayed. Job betrayed by whom? By none other than God himself. And don't forget the betrayal of God. God betrayed. Betrayed by our ancestors at every turn.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“¡Qué profundo es el oído! Piensa en lo que significa comprender algo que solamente has oído. ¡El carácter casi divino del oído! ¿No es por lo menos un fenómeno semidivino verte ante las inequidades más profundas de una existencia humana por el sencillo procedimiento de permanecer sentado en la oscuridad, escuchando lo que te dicen?”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Todo es un error -le dije-. ¿No es eso lo que me has estado diciendo? No existe más que error. Ahí está el meollo del mundo. Nadie encuentra su vida. Eso es la vida.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Pero en cuanto quieres apasionadamente lo que se encuentra más allá de tu alcance, estás listo para la frustración, te estás preparando para cuando te obliguen a ponerte de rodillas.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“Pensé que la insatisfacción humana había encontrado en Murray Ringold a su digno rival. Había sobrevivido a la insatisfacción. Eso es lo que queda cuando todo ha pasado, la tristeza disciplinada del estoicismo. Esto es el enfriamiento. Durante tanto tiempo es tal el calor, todo en la vida es tan intenso...y entonces, gradualmente, el calor se reduce, llega el enfriamiento y luego las cenizas. El hombre que me enseñó a boxear con un libro ha vuelto para demostrarme cómo puedes boxear con la vejez.
Y es ésa una habilidad asombrosa y noble, pues nada te enseña menos sobre la vejez que haber llevado una vida vigorosa.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“(...) procedía de un lugar y un tiempo distantes, un residuo espectral de aquellos maravillosos tiempos revolucionarios en que cuantos anhelaban el cambio de una manera programática, ingenua, alocada, imperdonable, subestimaban cómo la humanidad destroza sus ideas más nobles y las convierte en una farsa trágica. ¡Aupad! ¡Aupad! Como si la artería, la debilidad, la estupidez y la corrupción humanas no tuvieran una sola posibilidad contra lo colectivo, contra el poder de la gente que, unida, con espíritu de equipo, se esfuerza por renovar sus vidas y abolir la injusticia. ¡Aupad!”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

“No es preciso tener una visión evolucionada de la vida para ansiar poder, ni para alcanzarlo. De hecho, una visión evolucionada de la vida puede ser el peor obstáculo, mientras que la carencia de esa visión puede ser la ventaja más espléndida.”
― Philip Roth, I Married a Communist