Philip Roth

Maybe in Russia in 1886. But in Old Rimrock, New Jersey, in 1995, when the Ivan Ilyches come trooping back to lunch at the clubhouse after their morning round of golf and start to crow, "It doesn't get any better than this," they may be a lot closer to the truth than Leo Tolstoy ever was.
Swede Levov's life, for all I knew, had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore just great, right in the American grain.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you.

There's nothing here but what you're looking at. He's all about being looked at. He always was. He is not faking all this virginity. You're craving depths that don't exist. This guy is the embodiment of nothing. I was wrong. Never more mistaken about anyone in my life.

Yet it was this edict-- emotionally overloaded as it was by the uncertainty in our elders, by their awareness of all that was in league against them--that made the neighborhood a cohesive place. A whole community perpetually imploring us not to be immoderate and screw up, imploring us to grasp opportunity, exploit our advantages, remember what matters.

The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could?

And if there's anything worse than self-questioning coming too early in life, it's self-questioning coming too late.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach--that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again

The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse--the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.

So he just blabbered deliberately on about the boys and went home and, the story untold, he died. And I missed it. He turned to me, of all people, and he was conscious of everything and I missed everything.

There was no longer any innocence in what he remembered of his past. He saw that everything you say says either more than you wanted it to say or less than you wanted it to say; and everything you do does either more than you wanted it to do or less than you wanted it to do. What you said and did made a difference, all right, but not the difference you intended.