Quote

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.

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
Become
Altogether
Live
Pale
Nothing
Blank
Much
Endless
Mind
Losing
Memories
Upon
Ghostly
Fear
Prevail

More quotes by 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.
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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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The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.
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The theory of the teacher with all these immigrant kids was that if you spoke English loudly enough they would eventually understand.
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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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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.
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The poem is a cry of the unborn heart. Yes, because the poem perfectly embodies the world, there is no world without poem.
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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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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
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When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.
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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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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
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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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Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.
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
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The music of the Stones pounds the air like the amplified pulse of my erection.
E. L. Doctorow
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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
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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.
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 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.
E. L. Doctorow