In Joy Still Felt (1980), pp. 286-287
General sources
“When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters. This isn't to say I wished to change places. I didn't envy their persecution and the way in which it heightens their social importance. I didn't even envy them their seemingly more valuable and serious themes. The trivialization, in the West, of much that's deadly serious in the East is itself a subject, one requiring considerable imaginative ingenuity to transform into compelling fiction.”
Paris Review Interview (1986)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Philip Roth 95
American novelist 1933–2018Related quotes
Source: "Turning Loss into Beauty: The Tragedies of Geling Yan" in The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB930264290705115630 (25 June 1999)
As quoted in The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers (1984) by Max Weinberg and Robert Santelli
“And so it goes, it's the Devil I suppose
But it doesn't matter much to me.”
The Ghost.
A→B Life (2002)
“I didn't think so much of him at first. But now I get it: he's everything that I'm not.”
Source: The Royal Tenenbaums
"Bill Gates Joins the iPad's Army of Critics. Steve Jobs Couldn't Care Less." CBS MoneyWatch (11 February 2010) http://cbsnews.com/news/bill-gates-joins-the-ipads-army-of-critics-steve-jobs-couldnt-care-less
2000s