Skip to content

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

— E. L. Doctorow

Another quote →

More quotes by E. L. Doctorow

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.

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)

All E. L. Doctorow quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: E. L. Doctorow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.