I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.
Interpretation
The quote expresses how New York City inspires hope and the sense of endless possibilities in a short amount of time.
Philip Roth reflects on his experience of arriving in New York City, a place renowned for its vibrant energy and dynamic culture. In just a few hours, he felt a powerful resurgence of hope and potential, suggesting that the city has a unique ability to awaken dreams and ambitions in those who visit or live there. This illustrates the transformative impact that places can have on people's outlooks and aspirations.
In practice
During a motivational speech about chasing dreams.
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.
Go forth in confidence and go forth in peace. For there are angels to your left and angels to your right; angels in front of you and angels behind you; angels above you and angels below. You are loved, and you are not alone.
Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.
I was hopeless, now I'm on Hope Road.
The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.
I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.
Sail on ship of state, sail on, I union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes of future years, is hanging on thy fate!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.