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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
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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
Often
Masses
Identify
Permit
Mass
Answer
Asked
Ragtime
Question
Exploited
Answers
Persuaded
More quotes by 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.
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It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.
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Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.
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The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.
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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.
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
If you feel a bump on page one hundred, it may be you went off on page fifty.
E. L. Doctorow
The act of composition is a series of discoveries.
E. L. Doctorow
We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
E. L. Doctorow
Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies.
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
A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.
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 writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.
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
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.
E. L. Doctorow
I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
E. L. Doctorow
Dad is always hiding in his book.
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
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.
E. L. Doctorow
