51 quotes
Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
The Counterlife (1986)
The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.
The Counterlife (1986)
I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.
Deception: A Novel (1990)
When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.
Literary works do not take as their subjects characters and events which have impressed a writer primarily by the frequency of their appearance.
Writing About Jews (1963)
But what he no longer had was a conscience he could live with.
Nemesis (2010)
No one I know of has foreseen an America like the one we live in today.
When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it will be a great place.
Undermining experience, embellishing experience, rearranging and enlarging experience into a species of mythology.
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988)
Surely you haven't lived all these years punishing yourself, despising yourself, for something you didn't do. That's much too harsh a sentence.
Nemesis (2010)
Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988)
He tell us that in a democracy, keeping abreast of current events was a citizen’s most important duty and that you could never start too early to be informed about the news of the day.
The Plot Against America (2004)
Monty was the most overbearing of my uncles, which probably accounted for why he was also the richest.
The Plot Against America (2004)
There is an epidemic and he needs a reason for it. [...] That it is pointless, contingent, preposterous, and tragic will not satisfy him. That is is a proliferating virus will not satisfy him.
Nemesis (2010)
I'm sure the liars as skillful and persistent and devious as you reach the point where it's the one you are lying to, and not you, who seems like the one with the serious limitations.
Everyman (2006)
I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you — it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.
Deception: A Novel (1990)
Trump … is a massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac.
My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn’t just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you’ve got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren’t only bombs and bullets — no, they’re little gifts, containing meanings!
Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
The concerns of fiction, let it be said, are not those of a statistician — or of a public-relations firm. The novelist asks himself, "What do people think?"; the PR man asks, "What will people think?"
Writing About Jews (1963)