E. L. Doctorow Quotes

• There is no longer any such thing as fiction or non-fiction; there’s only narrative.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

• A few professional alienists understood his importance, but to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized
• 

  Writing a novel is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, Driving

• Poems have ideas. The ideas of poems come out of their emotions and their emotions are carried on images.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Emotion

  Tags in Poem

• A novelist is a person who lives in other people’s skins.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Music, Writing

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ourselves, Attraction

• I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don’t know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Shopping, Bookstore

• The writer isn’t made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writers, Witnessed

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

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, Planning

• Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Art, Politics

• In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It’s become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Personal, Relationships

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

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Self

• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Good, Writing

• I thought I would lose, so I didn’t prepare a speech.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Speech

• Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, Schizophrenia, Fact

• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing, Exploration

• Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Yourself, Composition

• There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Narrative, Fiction

• It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Tags in Car

E. L. Doctorow (21)

Birth:	6th January, 1931
Death:	21st July, 2015
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist, Professor

About

Edgar Lawrence "E. L." Doctorow was born in The Bronx, New York. He was an American novelist, and professor, best known internationally for his works of historical fiction. He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included the award-winning novels Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March. His most notable adaptations were for the film, Ragtime and the Broadway musical of the same name, which won four Tony Awards. He was the Loretta and Lewis Glucksman Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. President Barack Obama called him "one of America's greatest novelists".

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