As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up... read more
“Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn't surprise us, as astonishing to experience as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely. (...) It's lonely if there are buildings and it's lonely if there are no buildings. There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness - not all the ombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it. The most lethal of manmade explosives can't touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness.”Swede
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.”
“Even a monster has to be from somewhere--even a monster needs parents.”
“Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.”
Paradise Remembered
The Fall
Paradise Lost
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