History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that history can be a troubling or oppressive experience, and the speaker seeks to rise above it.
Philip Roth's quote suggests that history is filled with dark and disturbing events that can haunt individuals and societies. The use of the word 'nightmare' signifies the painful and distressing nature of historical experiences, implying that the speaker desires to escape these troubling elements and find a more hopeful or positive reality beyond them.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of historical traumas on present-day society, one might quote Roth to illustrate the continuing influence of the past.
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.
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Mad; adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.
Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?
That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
Scotland should be nothing less than equal with all the other nations of the world.
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