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E. L. Doctorow Quotes
1931–2015 United States
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (6 January 1931 - July 21, 2015) is an American author of several critically acclaimed novels that blend history and social criticism. He held the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University.
United States Academics Critics Editors Novelists Also known as: Doctorow, E. L., Doctorow, E.L., E.L. Doctorow
Random E. L. Doctorow quote
11 quotes
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.
Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining ...researching ...talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.
Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.
Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
You can’t remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again.
Billy Bathgate (1989)
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.
Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
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