The Ghost Writer Quotes

“I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again...”
― Philip Roth, Ghost Writer

“In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning. And if I knock off from this routine for as long as a day, I’m frantic with boredom and a sense of waste.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“Great artists, as history reveals, have been harshly persecuted time and again by the frightened and ill-educated,”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“It's no picnic up there in the egosphere.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“Because you happen to be a writer doesn’t mean you have to deny yourself the ordinary human pleasure of being praised and applauded.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“the joy of awakening each morning knowing there were all those empty hours ahead to be filled only with work.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“I felt as though the skin had been peeled away from half of my body. Half my face had been peeled away, and everybody would stare in horror for the rest of my life. Or they would stare at the other half, at the half still intact; I could see them smiling, pretending that the flayed half wasn't there, and talking to the half that was. And I could hear my self screaming at them, I could see myself thrusting my hideous side right up into their unmarred faces to make them properly horrified. 'I was pretty! I was whole! I was sunny, lively little girl! Look, look at what they did to me!' But whatever side they looked at, I would always be screaming, 'Look at the other! Why don't you look at the other!' That's what I thought about in the hospital at night. However they look at me, however they talk to me, however they try to comfort me, I will always be this half-flayed thing. I will never be young, I will never be kind or at peace or in love, and I will hate them all my life.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“There is his religion of art, my young successor: rejecting life! Not living is what he makes his beautiful fiction out of! And you will now be the person he is not living with!”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“Purity. Serenity. Simplicity. Seclusion. All one’s concentration and flamboyance and originality reserved for the grueling, exalted, transcendent calling. I looked around and I thought, This is how I will live.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“There is no life without patience.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“I'm not in the business. 'Liking people' is often just another racket.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“It is not our high purposes alone that make us moving creatures, but our humble needs and cravings.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“I don’t know anybody. I turn sentences around, and that’s it.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“the time will come when we are people again, and not just Jews.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“Why is it,” the unhappy teacher finally asked, “that for centuries people have hated you Jews?” Amy rose to her feet. She was stunned. “Don’t ask me that!” the girl said—“ask the madmen who hate us!” And she had nothing further to do with Miss Giddings as a friend—or with anyone else who asked her anything about what they couldn’t possibly understand.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“Oh, I can’t believe this is you.” “It is me!” “But—what about your father’s love?” “I am on my own!”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“Ma, you want to see physical violence done to the Jews of Newark, go to the office of the plastic surgeon where the girls get their noses fixed. That’s where the Jewish blood flows in Essex County, that’s where the blow is delivered—with a mallet! To their bones—and to their pride!”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“what I saw was my bewildered father, alone on the darkening street-corner by the park that used to be our paradise, thinking himself and all of Jewry gratuitously disgraced and jeopardized by my inexplicable betrayal.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“Nathan, your story, as far as Gentiles are concerned, is about one thing and one thing only. Listen to me, before you go. It is about kikes. Kikes and their love of money.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“All of this was why, from Quahsay, I had mailed my four published stories to Lonoff. Felix Abravanel was clearly not in the market for a twenty-three-year-old son.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“The life he described sounded like paradise to me; that he could think to do nothing better with his time than turn sentences around seemed to me a blessing bestowed not only upon him but upon world literature.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer: A Novel

“the complete man - as unimpressive as he is unimpressed”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“I'll be curious to see how we all come out someday. It could be an interesting story. You're not so nice and polite in your fiction," he said. "You're a different person.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“No one with seven books in New York City settles for one piece of ass. That’s what you get for a couplet.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“I know the kind of man I am and the kind of writer. I have my own kind of bravery, and please, let’s leave it at that.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“He winced when he stood--lumbago, he explained, from turning one too many sentences arounder that day--and said that he still his evening's reading. He did not do justice to a writer unless he read him on consecutive days and for no less than three hours at a sitting. Otherwise, despite his note taking and underlining, he lost touch with a book's inner life and might as well not have begun. Sometimes, when he unavoidably had to miss a day, he would go back and begin all over again, rather than be nagged by his sense that he was wronginger a serious author.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer

“Não poderia deixar de adorar aquele homem sem ilusões: adorar a franqueza, o escrúpulo, a severidade, o isolamento; admirar a implacável repressão do ego infantil, a insaciável busca de aperfeiçoamento; admirar a teimosia artística e a desconfiança quanto a tudo mais; admirar o encanto oculto, do qual ele acabava de me proporcionar uma rápida visão.”
― Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer