American - Novelist | March 19, 1933 - May 22, 2018
Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend.
Philip Roth
GamePretendNovelist
Routinely, when I finish a book, I think 'What will I do? Where will I get an idea?' And a kind of low-level panic sets in.
BookThinkKindWillFinishPanic
For me, the passing of time has provided me with subjects I never had before. Subjects I can now look at from a historical perspective. Like the anti-communist era in America. I lived through that. I was a boy; I didn't find a way to write about it until many years later. The same with the Vietnam War.
TimePerspectiveWarMeLookFind
I've stopped reading fiction. I don't read it at all. I read other things: history, biography. I don't have the same interest in fiction that I once did.
HistoryReadingSameFictionThings
My goal would be to find a big, fat subject that would occupy me to the end of my life, and when I finish it, I'll die. What's agony is starting; I hate starting them. I just want to keep writing now and end when it ends.
LifeHateMeWritingEndFat
I'm not angry; I write about angry characters. When I'm doing that, I'm happy. Just like when I'm writing about Mickey Sabbath being lustful, I'm not feeling lustful; I'm happy.
AngryHappyWritingDoingFeeling
I'm an Obama supporter. And if you're an Obama supporter, that means you had a hard time during the Bush years.
TimeYouHardYearsMeansHad
I rarely, if ever, had another book in mind while I was writing the previous book. Each book starts from ashes, really.
MindWritingBookAshesStartsEver
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