Philip Roth Quotes

Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.

But still, if it's true, how can it be a lie?

If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.

It's amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, then they act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you'd simply told the truth.

Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?

Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.

Beware of the truth, gentle Sister. Although much sought after, truth can be dangerous to the seeker. Myths and reassuring lies are much easier to find and believe. If you find a truth, even a temporary one, it can demand that you make painful changes. Conceal your truths within words. Natural ambiguity will protect you then.

Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.

In the essence of truth lies deceit.

Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, . . . some lies can be true, . . . broken faith may be restored.

Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know.

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true .

Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.

The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out to be either half truths or lies.

the truth is often a mixed message

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

Sometimes there are no answers.

People are concrescences of ambiguity.

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.