It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put a blanket on you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. ... Then the best part of it is that when you wake up, for the first 15 seconds, you have no idea where you are. You're just alive. That's all you know. And it's bliss, it's absolute bliss.
Interpretation
The quote captures the joy and simplicity of being present in the moment, especially through the experience of waking up.
Philip Roth reflects on a lesson from his father that goes beyond the practical advice about taking a nap. He emphasizes the joy of awakening, which brings a sense of bliss and the pure, carefree experience of simply being alive, free from the complexities of life, if only for a brief moment. It highlights the importance of embracing the small moments of happiness and the innocence of childhood.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech about finding joy in everyday moments.
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
I'm only asking you to stop every so often and turn off your mobile device, put down the Angry Birds and the Words with Friends and take a moment. Stop to look up and look around. Pause and check in with yourself - and spend a moment there.
They say we die twice - once when the last breath leaves our body and once when the last person we know says our name.
In all my years of counselling those near death, I've yet to hear anyone say they wish they had spent more time at the office
When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.
I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life.
We only have one life and one body to care of, and we better do it right. You never know what tomorrow may bring and so we better live this life the best we can and be grateful for everything we have.
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