Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
Philip RothThe fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.
Philip RothActually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.
Philip RothOnly in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles - and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn't their fault they were given a gift like speech - look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.
Philip Roth