E. L. Doctorow Quotes

Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.

E. L. Doctorow

• Music
• You
• Fiction

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• After 'Sesame Street,' it's a hyper-familiar world to me and I have this childlike ability to ignore the fact that I'm talking to scraps of cloth. Every country I go to, I see posters promoting the film in different languages. 'Los Muppets' - I love that!

  

  Feist
  • World
  • Country
  • Ignore

• Women are very intelligent and not appreciated. We try to pretend that we are not clever, and it's such a pity that we can't show how clever we are.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • Women
  • Intelligent
  • Try

• I've known I wanted to do this ever since I was a little kid and I used to get in trouble at church for goofing off all the time: mocking the preacher, imitating people and the things they did. I later learned my mother used to be just as goofy as I was when she was younger. I mean, Eddie Murphy in 'Coming to America?' My hero.

  

  Lamorne Morris
  • People
  • Time
  • She

• I didn't follow big box office ideas. That eventually led me to witches. It's led me to find interesting roles.

  

  Madchen Amick
  • Interesting
  • Ideas
  • Roles

• I could definitely see myself making a serious movie or a drama in the future.

  

  Adam Carolla
  • Movie
  • Future
  • Myself

• I mean, I think we're put here on earth to make your own destiny, to begin with. I don't think there's anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

  

  Waylon Jennings
  • Earth
  • Change
  • Destiny

• For me, writing about hotels is like writing about being in a parallel universe. The sense of voyeurism, and the sense of removedness, and there are all these people silently above you and next to you.

  

  Halsey
  • People
  • Writing
  • Universe

• If I get to a place early in the morning, I try to walk around by myself. I still try to find cool places to go to, like a record store in St. Louis or some restaurant in Chicago.

  

  Yuna
  • Morning
  • Myself
  • Cool

• I wasn't raised super-poor, but my parents got divorced, and my mother didn't have much money. Even now if I have a cake, I'll eat it slowly, and I save most of the money I have.

  

  Patrick Carney The Black Keys
  • Money
  • Mother
  • Parents

• I love engaging in conversation with other moms because we can relate to one another, and we swap valuable insight and information.

  

  Laila Ali
  • Information
  • Conversation
  • Valuable

• I go to Malawi twice a year. It's where two of my children were adopted from, and I have a lot of projects there that I go and check up on and children who I look after. It's sort of a commitment that I've made to this country and the hundreds of thousands of children there who have been orphaned by AIDS.

  

  Madonna Breakfast Club
  • Up
  • Country
  • Children

• I came from nothing really to something; I came from the gutter to making the gutters.

  

  Waka Flocka Flame
  • Nothing
  • Something
  • Gutter

• Purgatory fire will be more intolerable than all the torments that can be felt or conceived in this life.

  

  Venerable Bede
  • Life
  • Fire
  • Will

• The classic, 'Romeo and Juliet,' for me, is the iconic story of young love.

  

  Sam Heughan
  • Love
  • Story
  • Young

• If women built the bridges or were meant to build the bridges, then they would have done it.

  

  Adam Carolla
  • Women
  • Done
  • Bridges

• Pablo wanted to be loved and accepted. He wanted to destroy the elite he despised so much, but he also wanted to be the president of Colombia.

  

  Wagner Moura
  • President
  • Loved
  • Destroy

• I'm a composer, man.

  

  Henry Saint Clair Fredericks
  • Man
  • Composer

• Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

  Garry Kasparov
  • Problem
  • Responsibility
  • Environment

• It always feels good to come back here. I love New York... it's just nice to see a lot of familiar faces.

  

  Latrell Sprewell
  • Good
  • Nice
  • Faces

• Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.

  

  Jan Hammer
  • Up
  • Music
  • Growing

• When I started out as an activist, the issues were much clearer. There's advantage to the new media, but on the other hand, you miss the ability to frame an issue that you had when there were just three TV networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC. So the whole world could see the same police dogs. The same Bull Connor and his white tank. Now you've got narrow-casting. The media is all fragmented. It's so hard to get people to focus in a sustained way.

  

  Marian Wright Edelman
  • People
  • World
  • Hand

• I started by just sitting by the chessboard exploring things. I didn't even have books at first, and I just played by myself. I learnt a lot from that, and I feel that it is a big reason why I now have a good intuitive understanding of chess.

  

  Magnus Carlsen
  • Good
  • Why
  • Myself

• When I was in school, all our history books were American, so we learned American history, not Canadian history.

  

  Dave Foley
  • School
  • American
  • History

• Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Music
  • You
  • Fiction