#but I've had my fill of Philip Roth for 2024

[yujeong]

While American Pastoral by Philip Roth wasn't for me - I enjoyed parts of it, I appreciated what he did with it, but it's just not my kind of read - I can't deny I found a bunch of quotes in it that captured my attention (mostly during the first 3 chapters, before we get into the Swede's story):

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 consideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.

It was one of those things that get torn out of you and thrust into oblivion just because they didn't matter enough.

[...] we go through life with a generalized sense that everybody is wrong except us. [...] we don't just forget things because they don't matter but also forget things because they matter too much.

Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on.

That can happen when people die - the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all but unbearable now assert themselves in the most appealing way.