E. L. Doctorow

Movies are too literal.

— E. L. Doctorow

Planning to write is not writing.

— E. L. Doctorow

Dad is always hiding in his book.

— E. L. Doctorow

I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation.

— E. L. Doctorow

Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

— E. L. Doctorow

I've outlasted many marriages at Random House.

— E. L. Doctorow

I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this…

— E. L. Doctorow

We dress them [children] in the presumptions of the world. They are the bright small face of hope. They are the last…

— E. L. Doctorow

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in…

— E. L. Doctorow

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface…

— E. L. Doctorow

And though the newspapers called the shooting the Crime of the Century, Goldman knew it was only 1906 and there were ninety-four…

— E. L. Doctorow

The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.

— E. L. Doctorow

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained…

— E. L. Doctorow

From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions that don't seem to have an answer that everyone…

— E. L. Doctorow

I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it…

— E. L. Doctorow

My theory about why Hemingway killed himself is that he heard his own voice; that he reached the point where he couldn't…

— E. L. Doctorow

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

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen…

— E. L. Doctorow

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

There are two books that impressed me when I was very young. One was 'The Adventures of Augie March' - the idea…

— E. L. Doctorow

Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will…

— E. L. Doctorow

A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You can…

— E. L. Doctorow

There is really no fiction or non-fiction; there is only narrative. One mode of perception has no greater claim on the truth…

— E. L. Doctorow

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

“When was the moment, I don’t know when, with all my remembrances I can’t find it; maybe it was during our dance,…

— E. L. Doctorow

There are moments when I cannot bear this unremitting consciousness. It knows only itself. Awake, I am in a continuum with my…

— E. L. Doctorow

You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex…

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

Anyone at any age is able to tell the story of his or her life with authority.

— E. L. Doctorow

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

— E. L. Doctorow

My sense of what a book should be has changed so radically. I like to think for the better.

— E. L. Doctorow

If you feel a bump on page one hundred, it may be you went off on page fifty.

— E. L. Doctorow

To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving.

— E. L. Doctorow