E. L. Doctorow Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one had ever been put to death in Socrates' name. And that is because Socrates' ideas were never made law. Law, in whatever name, protects privilege.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Jesus, Law, Names

  E.L. Doctorow (2010). “The Book of Daniel: A Novel”, p.184, Random House

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• Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Schizophrenia, Form

  Interview in "Writers at Work" (The Paris Review Interviews), 8th Series, 1988.

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• There is really no fiction or non-fiction; there is only narrative. One mode of perception has no greater claim on the truth than the other; that the distance has perhaps to do with distance - narrative distance - from the characters; it has to do with the kind of voice that is talking, but it certainly hasn't to do with the common distribution between fact and imagination.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Distance, Character, Voice

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

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• We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Mistake, Past, Ifs

  E. L. Doctorow (1994). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, Perennial

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• A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Fiction, Flow, Force

  E.L. Doctorow (2011). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, p.147, Random House

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• Banks and churches and courtrooms all depend on the appurtenances of theatre. On illusion. Banks, the illusion of stability and honourable dealings to the rot and corruption of capitalist exploitation. Churches the illusion of sacred sanctuary of purposes of pacifying social discontent. Courtrooms of course designed to promote the illusion of solemn justice. If there was true justice why would such trappings be necessary? Wouldn't a table and chairs and an ordinary room serve just as well?

  E. L. Doctorow

  Tables And Chairs, Justice, Church

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• Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Fiction, Facts

  E.L. Doctorow (2011). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, p.157, Random House

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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

  Teacher, Teaching, Kids

  E.L. Doctorow (2010). “Loon Lake: A Novel”, p.35, Random House

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• I have been everywhere because I don't know what I'm looking for.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Knows, Has Beens

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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

  Thinking, Long Ago, Needs

  "EL Doctorow: 'I don't have a style, but the books do'" by Sarah Crown, www.theguardian.com. January 22, 2010.

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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

  Feelings, Culture, Storytelling

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• Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. 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

  Writing, Night, Fog

  "The Myth Maker". Interview with Bruce Weber, www.nytimes.com. October 20, 1985.

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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

  New York, Couple, Yellow

  E.L. Doctorow (2010). “Loon Lake: A Novel”, p.6, Random House

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• And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own.

  E. L. Doctorow

  People, Humanity, Dominion

  E.L. Doctorow (2009). “Homer & Langley: A Novel”, p.91, Random House

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• A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Doe, Life Is

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• There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Reflection, Thinking, Heard

  E.L. Doctorow (2009). “Homer & Langley: A Novel”, p.202, Random House

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• Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Children, Book, Worry

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• Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own.

  E. L. Doctorow

  People, World, Quiet

  E. L. Doctorow (1994). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, Perennial

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• One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing

  "EL Doctorow obituary" by Eric Homberger, www.theguardian.com. July 22, 2015.

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• Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Dying, Answers, Life After Death

  E.L. Doctorow (2009). “Homer & Langley: A Novel”, p.101, Random House

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• There are moments when I cannot bear this unremitting consciousness. It knows only itself. Awake, I am in a continuum with my dreams. I feel my typewriters, my table, my chair to have that assurance of a solid world, where things take up space, where is not the endless emptiness of insubstantial thought that leads to nowhere but itself. 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

  Dream, Memories, Typewriters

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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

  Self, Law, Voice

  E.L. Doctorow (2011). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, p.124, Random House

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• I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Trying, Ifs, I Can

  "Writers at Work 08: The Paris Review Interviews". Book by George Plimpton and Joyce Carol Oates, 1988.

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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

  Memories, Mind, Losing

  E.L. Doctorow (2009). “Homer & Langley: A Novel”, p.207, Random House

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• Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Writing, Form, Difficult

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