E. L. Doctorow Quotes
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Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
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Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.
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Somewhere along the line the rhythms and tonalities of music elided in my brain with the sounds that words make and the rhythm that sentences have.
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I've outlasted many marriages at Random House.
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I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries just the way the reader does, so you're simultaneously the writer and the reader.
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Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
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It seems to me that in literature, books have always been answers to other books.
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Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
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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.
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When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you.
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There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
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Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
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Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it's lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it's time to have a drink.
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I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
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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.
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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 write the book, then you find the justification for it.
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I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation.
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Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.
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One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.
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Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than the games played by a novelist, and can lead to wars.
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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.
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Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.
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Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.
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It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.