When She Was Good

When She Was Good (1967) is Philip Roth's only novel with a female protagonist, Lucy Nelson.


Works by Philip Roth
Fiction
  • Goodbye, Columbus
  • Letting Go
  • When She Was Good
  • Portnoy's Complaint
  • Our Gang
  • The Great American Novel
  • My Life As a Man
  • Sabbath's Theater
Kepesh Novels
  • The Breast
  • The Professor of Desire
  • The Dying Animal
Zuckerman Novels
  • The Ghost Writer
  • Zuckerman Unbound
  • The Anatomy Lesson
  • The Prague Orgy
  • The Counterlife
  • American Pastoral
  • I Married a Communist
  • The Human Stain
  • Exit Ghost
Roth Novels
  • Deception
  • Operation Shylock
  • The Plot Against America
Nemeses: Short Novels
  • Everyman
  • Indignation
  • The Humbling
  • Nemesis
Short Stories
  • "The Conversion of the Jews"
  • "Defender of the Faith"
  • "The Kind of Person I am"
  • "Epstein"
  • "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings"
  • "Eli, the Fanatic"
  • "Philosophy, or Something Like That"
  • "The Box of Truths"
  • "The Fence"
  • "Armando and the Frauds"
  • "The Final Delivery of Mr. Thorn"
  • "The Day It Snowed"
  • "The Contest for Aaron Gold"
  • "Heard Melodies Are Sweeter"
  • "Expect the Vandals"
  • "The Love Vessel"
  • "The Good Girl"
  • "The Mistaken"
  • "Novotny's Pain"
  • "Psychoanalytic Special"
  • "An Actor's Life for Me"
  • "On the Air"
  • "His Mistress's Voice"
  • "Smart Money"
  • "The Ultimatum"
  • "Drenka's Men"
  • "Communist"
Collections
  • Zuckerman Bound
  • A Philip Roth Reader
  • Library of America series
Non-fiction
Memoirs
  • The Facts
  • Patrimony
On Writing
  • Reading Myself and Others
  • Shop Talk
Adaptations
Films
  • Goodbye, Columbus
  • Portnoy's Complaint
  • The Human Stain
  • Elegy
Philip Roth bibliography

Famous quotes containing the words was good, when she, when, she, was and/or good:

    “There was a little girl, she had a little curl
    Right in the middle of her forehead;
    And when she was good, she was very, very good,
    And when she was bad, she was horrid.”
    —Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. There Was a Little Girl (attributed to Mother Goose)

    “What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation. Freedom is a loose leash, a license to be different from your mother and still be loved. . . . Freedom is . . . not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.”
    —Erica Jong (20th century)

    “Kings were wont to honour philosophers; but if I had such I would honour them as angels that should have such purity in them that they would not seek when they are the second to be the first, and when they are third to be the second.”
    —Elizabeth I (1533–1603)

    “She’s in the house.
    She’s at turn after turn.
    She’s behind me.
    She’s in front of me.
    She’s in my bed.
    She’s on path after path,
    and I’m weak from want of her.
    O heart,
    there is no reality for me
    other than she she
    she she she she
    in the whole of the reeling world.
    And philosophers talk about Oneness.”
    —Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)

    “There was a little girl
    Who had a little curl
    Right in the middle of her forehead,
    When she was good
    She was very, very good,
    But when she was bad she was horrid.”
    —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1822)

    “There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.”
    —Joseph Addison (1672–1719)