“The consumption of food was a sacrament of success. A man who carried a great stomach before him was thought to be in his prime. Women went into hospitals to die of burst bladders, collapsed lungs, overtaxed hearts and meningitis… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“I cite too the ordinary fears of mortality the inspection of a fast-growing mole on the side of the nose blood in the stool a painful injury or the mournful witness of the slow death of a parent all this is given to all men as well as the starting awake in the nether hours of the night from such… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share
“And what if neutrinos in their uncountable multitudinous dark-matteredness gravitationally directing the universe . . . are the souls of the dead?” — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“It was as if God had decreed this characterless engagement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption.” — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“Treason the only crime defined in the Constitution. Tyranny as under the Stuart and Tudor kings characterized by the elimination of political dissent under the laws of treason. Treason statutes which were many and unending, the instrument by which the monarch eliminated his opposition and also added to his wealth. The property of the executed traitor forfeited by his heirs… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share
“I remember holding her in my arms and absolving God of meaninglessness.” — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“Somehow he had catapulted himself beyond the world's value system. But this very fact lay upon him an awesome responsibility to maintain the illusions… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“Emily supposed the modern world was fortunate in the progress of science. But she could not help but feel at this moment the impropriety… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“Father looked at her and she was beautiful in the way she had been as a girl. He did not realize the pleasure he… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“Happiness consists of living in the dailiness of life and not knowing how happy you are. True happiness comes of not knowing you're happy.” — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“Grandmamma had been the last connection to our past. I had understood her as some referent moral authority to whom we paid no heed,… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“I asked this question: How can I think about my brain when it’s my brain doing the thinking? So is this brain pretending to… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“She's some kind of Socialist-anarchist-anarcho-syndicalist-Communist. Unless you're one of them you can't tell exactly what any of them are.” — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share
