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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.

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
Look
Seal
Everything
Seals
Looks
Sentences
Writing
Window
Way
Outside
Like
Wall
Face
Faces

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.
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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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.
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.
E. L. Doctorow
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The act of composition is a series of discoveries.
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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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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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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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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A novelist is a person who lives in other people's skins.
E. L. Doctorow
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Leo Crowley, Harry [Truman]'s Foreign Economic Administrator, tells Congressmen the theory...: 'If you create good governments in foreign countries, automatically you will have better markets for ourselves.' With that honeycunt staring you in the face, you'd forget your grammar too.
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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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 three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.
E. L. Doctorow
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The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.
E. L. Doctorow
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Dad is always hiding in his book.
E. L. Doctorow
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We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.
E. L. Doctorow
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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.
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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Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies.
E. L. Doctorow