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

More quotes by E. L. Doctorow

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We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
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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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Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.
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Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.
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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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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.
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Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.
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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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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.
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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 poem is a cry of the unborn heart. Yes, because the poem perfectly embodies the world, there is no world without poem.
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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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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Dad is always hiding in his book.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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The Shadow had no imagination. He neither looked at naked women nor thought of ridding the world of dictators like Hitler or Mussolini.
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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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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.
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