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It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.
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
Process
World
Ragtime
Dissatisfaction
Composed
Evident
Endless
Constantly
More quotes by E. L. Doctorow
Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.
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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.
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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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Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies.
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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.
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A new reader shouldn't be able to find you in your work, though someone who's read more may begin to.
E. L. Doctorow
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.
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The music of the Stones pounds the air like the amplified pulse of my erection.
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I worry about images. Images are what things mean.
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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.
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So that individuation may be compared to a pyramid in that it is only achieved by the placement of the top stoneā¦ The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know. There goes you theory up shits creek. He smiled.
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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.
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Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.
E. L. Doctorow
I am often asked the question How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is By being persuaded to identify with them.
E. L. Doctorow
And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.
E. L. Doctorow
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
A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.
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Images break with a small ping, their destruction is as wonderful as their being, they are essentially instruments of torture exploding through the individual's calloused capacity to feel undifferentiated emotions full of longing and dissatisfaction and monumentality.
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I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.
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The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.
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