be free of all that noise

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

And he couldn't do it. He could not fucking die. How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here.

Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

People are unjust to anger - it can be enlivening and a lot of fun.

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy until they die!

-Philip Roth