Philip Roth Quotes

The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.

I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.

History is full of times when the inevitable front-runner is inevitable right up until he or she is no longer inevitable.

We never really know what's around the corner when we're filming - what turn a story will take, what a character will do or say to surprise us, how the events in the world will impact our story.

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.

If you ask me a question, don't tell me what the question is in advance, 'cause I'd rather not know.

The one thing we can all be sure about in politics is you are as well to expect the unexpected.

Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.

While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spun of 'conventional wisdom,' is only a sucker punch to that common-sense fact.

There's always going to be the circumstances you can't plan for. There's always the unexpected relevance and the serendipity.

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

History is totally unpredictable.

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

History proceeds in zig zags through crooked paths.

No man can tell what the future may bring forth

Destiny and history are untidy.

The older I get, the more I'm surprised with life. Things don't end up the way you think they will.

I'm often associated with parallel narratives or dual narratives. The 'Devil in the White City' was a fluke.

People's lives often don't turn out as they expect.

Life is not what you expect: it is made up of the most unexpected twists and turns.

Bad things can happen even to the best players.

The easiest way of change history is to become a historian.