Philip Roth

"Language is a virus from outer space."

"We are much more the victims of habit than we realize."

"Understanding is not required; empathy is."

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous."

"We are all victims of circumstance."

"Suffering is not ennobling; it is mostly just suffering."

"The body is a very intelligent thing."

"Writing is thinking on paper."

"You write to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't."

"There is no greater power than the power to tell a story."

"The human animal cannot go forward into the future without preserving the past."

"We live in an age of excess and deficiency."

"Sex is only interesting when it's slightly wrong."

"The unexamined life is not just unlivable, it's unwriteable."

"Aging is not for the faint of heart."

"What we love is always more complicated than we admit."

"The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are."

"Nobody has ever disagreed with me that Melville is a great writer."

"The antagonism between the life so short and the craft so long."

"Everything a writer writes is autobiographical in some way."

"The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow."

"We are never innocent of what we pretend not to know."

"Family is the first reality, personality is the second."

"Consciousness is what makes us human and what torments us."

"The only thing we really have is our integrity."

"American culture is full of contradictions and tensions."

"Words are all we have; they are everything."

"The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference."

"Desire is the most honest human impulse."

"We are always trying to escape ourselves."