"Nathan had been asked by a student if he wrote "in quest of immortality." (...) "If you're from New Jersey," Nathan had said, "and you write thirty books, and you win the Nobel Prize, and you live to be white-haired and ninety-five, it's highly unlikely but not impossible that after your death they'll decide to name a rest stop for you on the Jersey Turnpike. And so, long after you're gone, you may indeed be remembered, but mostly by small children, in the backs of cars, when they lean forward and tell their parents, ´stop, please, stop at Zuckerman - I have to make a pee.`
- Philip Roth i The Counterlife (1986).

Philip Roth er i mellemtiden selv blevet en af favoritterne til at vinde Nobelprisen i litteratur, han er fra New Jersey og hans seneste bog, The Humbling, er for øvrigt hans tredivte.