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What we call fiction is the ancient way of knowing, the total discourse that antedates all the special vocabularies....Fiction is democratic, it reasserts the authority of the single mind to make and remake the world.

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
Special
Vocabulary
Knowing
Discourse
Call
Total
Writing
Ancient
Mind
Democratic
Way
Authority
Vocabularies
Make
Fiction
Remake
World
Single
Remakes

More quotes by E. L. Doctorow

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I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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
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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
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A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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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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
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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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Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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
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Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.
E. L. Doctorow
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We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
E. L. Doctorow