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E. L. Doctorow Quotes

It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Car, Driving, Night

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

Reason, Writer, Century

We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.

Attracted, Edges, Raw

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

Planning, Talking, None

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

Good, Feeling, Raining

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Night, Driving, Fog

A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You can do geography, as Faulkner did, or you can dwell on a particular period. It provides the same framework.

Work, Time, Fiction

I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries just the way the reader does, so you're simultaneously the writer and the reader.

Writer, Reader, Intrigued

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

Happened, Felt, Historian

I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation.

Moderation, Vices, Number

When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you.

Research, Whatever

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

Socially, Acceptable, Form

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

Page, Quotation, Belong

Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.

Art, Politics, Society

Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.

Music, Fiction, Books

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.

Life, Personal, Fact

Somewhere along the line the rhythms and tonalities of music elided in my brain with the sounds that words make and the rhythm that sentences have.

Music, Brain, Words

Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it's lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it's time to have a drink.

Time, Breakfast, Gym

Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.

Money, Justice, Progress

I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it.

Work, Ideas, Feelings

Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway.

Great, Beginning, Understand

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.

Fiction, Narrative, Longer

I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. 'World's Fair' was an exception. It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. I did it in seven months. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book.

God, Book, Fair

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.

Culture, Lost, Feeling

To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving.

Moving, Peers, Immensely

Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Author

Born: January 6, 1931

Died: July 21, 2015

Links

Find on Amazon: E. L. Doctorow

Cite this Page:Citation

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