Author: Philip Roth

Cites

• NULL (3)
  • IN: Goodbye, Columbus (1959) Novella, American
    EPIGRAPH: The heart is half a prophet
    FROM: Yiddish proverb, (None), Proverb, NULL
  • IN: I Married a Communist (1998) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Many songs have I heard in my native land -- Songs of joy and sorrow. But one of them was deeply engraved in my memory: It's the song of the common worker. Ekh, lift up the cudgel, Heave-ho! Pull harder together, Heave-ho!
    FROM: "Dubinushka", a Russian folksong. In the 1940s performed and recorded, in Russian, by the Soviet Army Chorus and Band, (1940), Song, Russia
  • IN: Portnoy's Complaint (1967) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Portnoy's Complaint (pôrt' -noiz kem-plānt') n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.
    FROM: NULL, (None), Definition, NULL
• Johnny Mercer (1)
  • IN: American Pastoral (1997) NULL, American
    EPIGRAPH: Dream when they day is thru, / Dream and they might come true, / Things never are as bad as they seem, / So dream, dream, dream.
    FROM: Dream, (1944), Song, US
• William Carlos Williams (1)
  • IN: American Pastoral (1997) NULL, American
    EPIGRAPH: the rare occurrence of the expected . . .
    FROM: At Kenneth Burke's Place, (1946), Poem, US
• William Shakespeare (1)
  • IN: Sabbath's Theater (1995) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Prospero: Every third thought shall be my grave
    FROM: The Tempest, (1623), Play, UK
• E. E. Cummings (1)
  • IN: Indignation (2008) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Olaf (upon what were once knees) does almost ceaselessly repeat "there is some shit I will not eat"
    FROM: i sing of Olaf glad and big, (1931), Poem, US
• Dylan Thomas (1)
  • IN: Exit Ghost (2007) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Before death takes you, O take back this.
    FROM: "Find Meat on Bones", (1936), Poem, US
• John Keats (1)
  • IN: Everyman (2006) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow...
    FROM: Ode to a Nightingale, (1819), Poem, UK
• Frank Norris (1)
  • IN: The Great American Novel (1973) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: … the Great American Novel is not extinct like the Dodo, but mythical like the Hippogriff…
    FROM: The Responsibilities of the Novelist, (1903), NULL, US
• Thomas Mann (1)
  • IN: Letting Go (1961) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: All actuality is deadly earnest; and it is morality itself that, one with life, forbids us to be true to the guileless unrealism of our youth.
    FROM: A Sketch of My Life, (1930), Book, Germany
• Simone Weil (1)
  • IN: Letting Go (1961) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
    FROM: Gravity and Grace, (1947), Book, France
• Wallace Stevens (1)
  • IN: Letting Go (1961) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: It may be that one life is a punishment For another, as the son's life for the father's. But that concerns the secondary characters. It is a fragmentary tragedy Within the universal whole. The son And the father alike and equally are spent, Each one, by the necessity of being Himself, the unalterable necessity Of being this unalterable animal.
    FROM: "Esthétique du Mal", (1944), Poem, US
• Jonathan Swift (1)
  • IN: Our Gang (1971) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: And I remember frequent Discourses with my Master concerning the Nature of Manhood, in other Parts of the World; having Occasion to talk of Lying, and false Representation, it was with much Difficulty that he comprehended what I meant; althought he had otherwise a most acute Judgment. For he argued them; That the Use of Speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive Information of Facts; now if anyone said the Thing which was not, these Ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving Information, that he leaves me worse than in Ignorance; for I am led to believe a Thing Black when it is White, and Short when it is Long. And these were all the Notions he had concerning that Faculty of Lying, so perfectly well understood, and so universally practised among human Creatures.
    FROM: A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, (1726), Novel, US
• George Orwell (1)
  • IN: Our Gang (1971) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: ...one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end... Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
    FROM: "Politics and the English Language", (1946), Book, UK

Cited by

• John Green (1)
  • IN: An Abundance of Katherines (2006) Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: But the pleasure isn't owning the person. This pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.
    FROM: The Human Stain, (2000), Novel, US
• Claire Messud (1)
  • IN: The Woman Upstairs (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Fuck the laudable ideologies.
    FROM: Sabbath's Theater, (1995), Novel, US
• Ed Tarkington (1)
  • IN: Only Love Can Break Your Heart (2016) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: How accidentally a fate is made... or how accidental it all may seem when it is inescapable.
    FROM: The Human Stain, (2000), Novel, US
• Cristina Comencini (1)
  • IN: When the Night (2012) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: There's the not-so that reveals the so -- that's fiction.
    FROM: Exit Ghost, (2007), Novel, US