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Philip Roth

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Aging All but two were older than he, and though they assembled each week in a mood of comradely good cheer, the conversation invariably turned to matters of sickness and health, their personal biographies having by this time become identical with their medical biographies … At his studio, they more readily identified one another by their ailments than by thier painting. “How is your sugar?” “How is your pressure?” “What did the doctor say?” “Did you hear about my neighbor? It spread to the liver.” Philip Roth, Everyman  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Aging My God, he thought, the man I once was! The life that surrounded me! The force that was mine! No “otherness” to be felt anywhere! Once upon a time I was a full human being. Philip Roth, Everyman  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Aging Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre. Philip Roth, Everyman  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Class struggle I'm not trying to turn you into a bourgeois, Naomi. If the bed is too luxurious, we can do it on the floor. Alexander Portnoy, protagonist in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Clothes The big thing at the Empire [Burlesque house] is hats. Down the aisle from me a fellow addict fifty years my senior is dropping his load in his hat. His hat, Doctor! Oy, I'm sick. I want to cry. Not into your hat, you schvantz, you got to put that thing on your head! You've got to put it on now and go back outside and walk around downtown Newark dripping gissum down your forehead. How will you eat lunch in that hat! Alexander Portnoy, to Dr. Spielvogel, his psychoanalyst, in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie I know concrete. I know asphalt. I don't know flowers. Marcus Messner, protagonist in Philip Roth's Indignation © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them— because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight! The disproportionate and the melodramatic, this is my daily bread! Alexander Portnoy, to Dr. Spielvogel, his psychoanalyst, in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie Whew! Have I got grievances! Alexander Portnoy, protagonist in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie Yes, shame, shame, on Alex P., the only member of his graduating class who hasn't made grandparents of his Mommy and his Daddy. While everybody else has been marrying nice Jewish girls, and having children, and buying houses, and (my father's phrase) putting down roots,  while all the other sons have been carrying forward the family name, what he has been doing is—chasing cunt. And shikse  cunt to boot! Chasing it, sniffing it, lapping it, shtupping  it, but above all, thinking about it. Alexander Portnoy, protagonist in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie I don't want you to rehabilitate me. Just make me interesting. Philip Roth to his Blake Bailey, his biographer © 2021 Kwiple.com
Sex I'll be obsessed when I'm eighty exactly as I was when I was eighteen. Philip Roth, when middle-aged © 2021 Kwiple.com
Snapshot No hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself, that was it—he'd come upon it early and intuitively, and however elemental, that was the whole of it. He, protagonist portrayed in Philip Roth's Everyman © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Roth was never to be a mute inglorious Milton. To imagine him without fame is to strip him bare. Philip Roth portrayed by Cynthia Ozick © 2021 Kwiple.com
Sports Ikey, Mikey, Jake and Sam, We're the boys who eat no ham, We play football, we play soccer— And we keep matzohs in our locker! Aye, aye, aye, Weequahic High! Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint © 2016 Kwiple.com
 
Surely you jest So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes? Dr. Spielvogel, psychoanalyst, in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint  © 2016 Kwiple.com