Quote

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

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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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All over the world today, not just in the totalitarian countries, assiduous functionaries in Ministries of Truth are clubbing history dumb and rendering language insensible.
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Implications of treason are fed like cubes of sugar to the twelve-headed animal which is justice. In ... opening remarks. In the way questions are asked. In support of lines of questioning where cases of treason are cited and the Judge endorses the relevance of the citation.
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A writer of books has to admit that film is the enemy, and that in my case I have been sleeping with the enemy.
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I worry about images. Images are what things mean.
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A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.
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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.
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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.
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Time seems to me a drift, a shifting of sand. And my mind is shifting with it. I am wearing away.
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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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The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.
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I've known several cases of writers who decide to write about something and they research the hell out of it and when they're ready to write, they can't move because they are so burdened. I start writing. Whatever I need somehow comes to hand.
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Uncharged with invisible meaning, the visible is nothing, mere clay and without visible circumstance, a territory, to connect to, our spirit is shapeless, nameless, and undefined.
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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.
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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 stone… 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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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.
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And though the newspapers called the shooting the Crime of the Century, Goldman knew it was only 1906 and there were ninety-four years to go.
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The music of the Stones pounds the air like the amplified pulse of my erection.
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And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.
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Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.
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