E. L. Doctorow Quotes
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 is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.
Quotes to Explore
-
It's good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and fortuitous social relations. Everything can't be personalized.
-
When you're climbing at high altitudes, life can get pretty miserable.
-
By patting somebody on the back, a boy or a girl, a professional dancer, male, female, it really makes people feel good and I know it certainly made me feel good.
-
I think one's history and past is important at a certain time in your life, especially as an artist, just to try to hone in on that.
-
Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person's life.
-
I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
-
The other deals with my life and my livelihood and my family and all that I stand for.
-
Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.
-
I believe life is an 'experience ball.' You throw it at someone, it picks up their response... it grows. You play with that ball, learning what it teaches you.
-
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
-
We use the term 'fight' very lightly - 'I've been fighting so hard to get my car, I've been fighting so hard to get that job, I've been fighting so hard to get that girl.' But the reality is boxers do fight bitterly to get whatever they want or whatever they need in life, and most of them come from nothing, which is the case of Roberto Duran.
-
I actually run a non-profit where one of the main objectives is to branch out and get a new audience for the theater. Just because the writing is so good and nothing is more effective than seeing something live and happening right in front of your face, so I definitely want to continue to pursue that.
-
Money often costs too much.
-
My first encounter with Marx's writings came very early in life, as a result of the strange times I grew up in, with Greece exiting the nightmare of the neofascist dictatorship of 1967-74.
-
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.
-
That point of life when I learned I could cook, that always made me understand what cooks felt like feeding other people. It's okay to receive, but it's really cool to give, so food is to me sexy because it's the fact that someone is giving it to someone else.
-
Where there is love there is life.
-
The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.
-
A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better.
-
One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure-and in some cases I have-that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.
-
When you start in movie business... It is a business, actually. Nothing to do with art. Picasso is art, and Giacometti, but film acting is no art. Just the luck of being discovered, maybe.
-
No child should be brought up to suppose that its food and clothes come down from heaven or are miraculously conjured from empty space by papa. Loathsome as we have made the idea of duty (like the idea of work) we must habituate children to a sense of repayable obligation to the community for what they consume and enjoy, and inculcate the repayment as a point of honor.
-
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
-
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 is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.
