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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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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
People
Months
Bright
Building
Red
Washed
White
Seemed
Painted
Place
Car
Buildings
Wells
Clean
Dressed
Firsts
York
Cars
Well
Lived
Yellow
First
Couple
Incredibly

More quotes by 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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The act of composition is a series of discoveries.
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Stories distribute the suffering so that it can be borne.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.
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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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It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.
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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.
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The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.
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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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Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.
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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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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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Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.
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I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
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Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
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A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.
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