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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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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
Commonly
Propositions
Distinction
Narrative
Fiction
Understand
Proposition
Nonfiction

More quotes by E. L. Doctorow

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Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.
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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.
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A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.
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Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.
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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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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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I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
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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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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.
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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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Dad is always hiding in his book.
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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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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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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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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.
E. L. Doctorow
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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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The music of the Stones pounds the air like the amplified pulse of my erection.
E. L. Doctorow
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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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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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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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