“Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.”
Philip Roth
“No, a man´s character isn´t his fate; a man´s fate is the joke that his life plays on his character.”
Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
“But isn´t one´s pain quotient shocking enough without fictional amplification, without giving things an intensity that is ephemeral in life and sometimes even unseen? Not for some. For some very, very few that amplification, evolving uncertainly out of nothing, constitutes their only assurance, and the unlived, the surmise, fully drawn in print on paper, is the life whose meaning comes to matter most.”
Philip Roth, Exit Ghost
