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60 quotes by E. L. Doctorow

E. L. Doctorow E.L. Doctorow, (photograph by Mark Sobczak) Born Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (1931-01-06) January 6, 1931 (age 84) Bronx, New York, United States Occupation Writer, editor, professor Nationality American Alma mater Kenyon College, Columbia University Period 1960–present Notable works The Book of Daniel Ragtime World's Fair Billy Bathgate The March Homer & Langley Spouse Helen Esther Setzer (m. 1953; 3 children) Edgar...
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Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

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

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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.

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

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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... →

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

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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... →

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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... →

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