“Updike and Bellow hold their flashlights out into the world, reveal the world as it is now. I dig a hole and shine my flashlight into the hole.” Philip Roth, Towering Novelist Who Explored Lust, Jewish Life and America, Dies at 85. (One of my favorite authors and three of my favorite topics…)

+ “She was so deeply embedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.” The Ringer: The Iconic Profanity—and Essential Anthropology—of Portnoy’s Complaint.

+ “I occasionally have an anti-Roth reader in mind. I think, ‘How he is going to hate this!’ That can be just the encouragement I need.” The Paris Review interview with Philip Roth.