“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… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“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… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“I didn’t actually have to write a thing because the act of reading was my writing. I thought of myself as a writer for… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“You're nothing more than a clever prostitute. You accepted the conditions in which you found yourself and you triumphed.” — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
“Writing teachers invariably tell students, write about what you know. That's, of course, what you have to do, but on the other hand, how… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
