E. L. Doctorow Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Fiction, Flow, Force

  E.L. Doctorow (2011). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, p.147, Random House

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• Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Schizophrenia, Form

  Interview in "Writers at Work" (The Paris Review Interviews), 8th Series, 1988.

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• We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Mistake, Past, Ifs

  E. L. Doctorow (1994). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, Perennial

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• Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Book, Writing, People

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• There is really no fiction or non-fiction; there is only narrative. One mode of perception has no greater claim on the truth than the other; that the distance has perhaps to do with distance - narrative distance - from the characters; it has to do with the kind of voice that is talking, but it certainly hasn't to do with the common distribution between fact and imagination.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Distance, Character, Voice

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

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• The theory of the teacher with all these immigrant kids was that if you spoke English loudly enough they would eventually understand.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Teacher, Teaching, Kids

  E.L. Doctorow (2010). “Loon Lake: A Novel”, p.35, Random House

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• I have been everywhere because I don't know what I'm looking for.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Knows, Has Beens

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• 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.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Thinking, Long Ago, Needs

  "EL Doctorow: 'I don't have a style, but the books do'" by Sarah Crown, www.theguardian.com. January 22, 2010.

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

  E. L. Doctorow

  Feelings, Culture, Storytelling

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• The act of composition is a series of discoveries.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Discovery, Composition

  E. L. Doctorow, Christopher D. Morris (1999). “Conversations with E.L. Doctorow”, p.102, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own.

  E. L. Doctorow

  People, Humanity, Dominion

  E.L. Doctorow (2009). “Homer & Langley: A Novel”, p.91, Random House

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• A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Doe, Life Is

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• There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Reflection, Thinking, Heard

  E.L. Doctorow (2009). “Homer & Langley: A Novel”, p.202, Random House

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• Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Children, Book, Worry

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• I've known several cases of writers who decide to write about something and they research the hell out of it and when they're ready to write, they can't move because they are so burdened. I start writing. Whatever I need somehow comes to hand.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Moving, Writing, Hands

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

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Night, Fog

  "The Myth Maker". Interview with Bruce Weber, www.nytimes.com. October 20, 1985.

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• One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing

  "EL Doctorow obituary" by Eric Homberger, www.theguardian.com. July 22, 2015.

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• Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Dying, Answers, Life After Death

  E.L. Doctorow (2009). “Homer & Langley: A Novel”, p.101, Random House

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• There are moments when I cannot bear this unremitting consciousness. It knows only itself. Awake, I am in a continuum with my dreams. I feel my typewriters, my table, my chair to have that assurance of a solid world, where things take up space, where is not the endless emptiness of insubstantial thought that leads to nowhere but itself. My memories pale as I prevail upon them again and again. They become more and more ghostly. I fear nothing so much as losing them altogether and having only my blank endless mind to live in.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Dream, Memories, Typewriters

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• The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Self, Law, Voice

  E.L. Doctorow (2011). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, p.124, Random House

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• I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Trying, Ifs, I Can

  "Writers at Work 08: The Paris Review Interviews". Book by George Plimpton and Joyce Carol Oates, 1988.

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• I've always felt, as a writer, that radicals are fascinating because they're relations, they have a place in the American family. They're the relatives everyone wishes would go away. They're the embarrassments to decorum and good taste.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Wish, Going Away, Radicalism

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• Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and can lead to wars.

  E. L. Doctorow

  War, Games, Novelists

  "The long view" by James Campbell, www.theguardian.com. January 14, 2006.

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• Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what?

  E. L. Doctorow

  Running, Writing, Mean

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• An Animated Cartoon Theology:
  1. People are animals.
  2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain.
  3. Life is antagonistic to the living.
  4. The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music.
  5. The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart destroyed by their own cunning.
  6. The small are tortured by the large and the large destroyed by their own momentum.
  7. We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Pain, Smart, Animal

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