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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
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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
Telling
Hear
Words
Write
Music
Writing
Musician
More quotes by E. L. Doctorow
The music of the Stones pounds the air like the amplified pulse of my erection.
E. L. Doctorow
We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.
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
Time seems to me a drift, a shifting of sand. And my mind is shifting with it. I am wearing away.
E. L. Doctorow
The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.
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
And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.
E. L. Doctorow
Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.
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.
E. L. Doctorow
I worry about images. Images are what things mean.
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
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
The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.
E. L. Doctorow
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
A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.
E. L. Doctorow
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 them, they were fly-specks on the page.
E. L. Doctorow
We dress them [children] in the presumptions of the world. They are the bright small face of hope. They are the last belief we have, the belief in making them believe.
E. L. Doctorow
So that individuation may be compared to a pyramid in that it is only achieved by the placement of the top stone… The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know. There goes you theory up shits creek. He smiled.
E. L. Doctorow
Dad is always hiding in his book.
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
