The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people s suffering for his principles. — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves. — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own. — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
People come out of the mid-west and go to the Ivy League. I kind of reversed the direction. — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
Suffering isn't a moral endowment. People don't always do well under duress, and it seemed to me to be truer to a… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
I lived in New York for a couple months. It seemed to me at first an incredibly clean place with well-dressed people… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
It is the immigrant hordes who keep this country alive, the waves of them arriving year after year… Who believes in America… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
An Animated Cartoon Theology: 1. People are animals. 2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain. 3. Life is antagonistic… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
There are moments when I cannot bear this unremitting consciousness. It knows only itself. Awake, I am in a continuum with my dreams. I… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own. — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
It is the immigrant hordes who keep this country alive, the waves of them arriving year after year… Who believes in America more than… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it actually slowed… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
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… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
Facts are the images of history, just as images are the facts of fiction. — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
Uncharged with invisible meaning, the visible is nothing, mere clay; and without visible circumstance, a territory, to connect to, our spirit is shapeless, nameless,… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
“Writing a novel is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority. — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
I got married very early, and in no time at all, we had three children. And it seemed to me I had an obligation… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
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… — E. L. Doctorow Copy Share
