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.
Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.
For those whose exclusive norm of constitutional judging is merely fair reading of language applied to facts objectively viewed, 'Brown' must either be flat-out wrong or a very mystifying decision.
The President to-night has a dream: - He was in a party of plain people, and, as it became known who he was, they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said: - "He is a very common-looking man". The President replied: - "The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he makes so many of them".
War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope.
I was so fortunate to play my club cricket at Moseley Ashfield. We had loads of Asians, white players, black players. You grow up from that knowing it just doesn't matter what religion or culture people are into, everyone is different.
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