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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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E. L. Doctorow
Age: 84 †
Born: 1931
Born: January 6
Died: 2015
Died: July 21
Author
Essayist
Faculty Member
Novelist
Playwright
Professor
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Edgar Laurence Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow
Century
Witnesses
Reason
Vacuums
Need
Vacuum
Needs
Terrifying
Writing
Witness
Made
Scary
Writers
Writer
Ragtime
More quotes by E. L. Doctorow
Because like all whores you value propriety. You are creature of capitalism, the ethics of which are so totally corrupt and hypocritical that your beauty is no more than the beauty of gold, which is to say false and cold and useless.
E. L. Doctorow
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.
E. L. Doctorow
When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.
E. L. Doctorow
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
The theory for admitting accomplice testimony that is uncorroborated is that conspiracy is by its nature secretive and that only the parties to it can know it occurred. But in practice this means the accomplice's guilt is modified to the degree that he can convict the defendant.
E. L. Doctorow
I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.
E. L. Doctorow
I worry about images. Images are what things mean.
E. L. Doctorow
Stories distribute the suffering so that it can be borne.
E. L. Doctorow
Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.
E. L. Doctorow
If you feel a bump on page one hundred, it may be you went off on page fifty.
E. L. Doctorow
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
E. L. Doctorow
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
We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
E. L. Doctorow
I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.
E. L. Doctorow
Dad is always hiding in his book.
E. L. Doctorow
Time seems to me a drift, a shifting of sand. And my mind is shifting with it. I am wearing away.
E. L. Doctorow
A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.
E. L. Doctorow
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.
E. L. Doctorow
It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.
E. L. Doctorow
The poem is a cry of the unborn heart. Yes, because the poem perfectly embodies the world, there is no world without poem.
E. L. Doctorow