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.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
Greece is the mother of democracy and South Africa is its youngest daughter
Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.