Quote

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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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
Purpose
Clay
Spirit
Connect
Without
Territory
Nothing
Visible
Invisible
Shapeless
Mere
Undefined
Meaning
Nameless
Circumstances
Circumstance

More quotes by 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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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
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A new reader shouldn't be able to find you in your work, though someone who's read more may begin to.
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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We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
E. L. Doctorow
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The act of composition is a series of discoveries.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
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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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
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Because like all whores you value propriety. You are creature of capitalism, the ethics of which are so totally corrupt and hypocritical that your beauty is no more than the beauty of gold, which is to say false and cold and useless.
E. L. Doctorow
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I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.
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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The music of the Stones pounds the air like the amplified pulse of my erection.
E. L. Doctorow
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I lived in New York for a couple months. It seemed to me at first an incredibly clean place with well-dressed people and washed cars and bright-painted red-and-yellow streetcars and white buildings.
E. L. Doctorow
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A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.
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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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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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.
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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Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.
E. L. Doctorow