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" Movies are too literal. "
E. L. Doctorow
Too
Literal
Movies
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" I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it. "
E. L. Doctorow
Feeling
Feelings
Ideas
" Suffering isn't a moral endowment. People don't always do well under duress, and it seemed to me to be truer to a fellow in that situation to make him angry. "
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People
Suffering
Angry
" The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like. "
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Felt
You
Will
" The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity. "
E. L. Doctorow
Nature
Good
Fiction
" I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech. "
E. L. Doctorow
Lose
Prepare
Speech
" I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad. "
E. L. Doctorow
Avoid
Most
Experience
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Down
Yourself
You
" I got married very early, and in no time at all, we had three children. And it seemed to me I had an obligation to support them. "
E. L. Doctorow
Children
Early
Got
" I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. 'World's Fair' was an exception. It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. I did it in seven months. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book. "
E. L. Doctorow
World
Done
Book
" People come out of the mid-west and go to the Ivy League. I kind of reversed the direction. "
E. L. Doctorow
People
Out
Kind
" A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You can do geography, as Faulkner did, or you can dwell on a particular period. It provides the same framework. "
E. L. Doctorow
Time
Place
Work
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Myself
Find
Learn
" Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society. "
E. L. Doctorow
Like
Society
Politics
" My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest performers and musicians of the day would come to shop. He knew the classical repertoire inside out. "
E. L. Doctorow
Music
Father
Day
" The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That's good. The computer goes down? That's good. All these things are good. It has to be a little bit of a struggle. "
E. L. Doctorow
Good
Struggle
You
" My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.' "
E. L. Doctorow
Now
Start
Say
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Identity
You
Voice
" From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions that don't seem to have an answer that everyone agrees on. "
E. L. Doctorow
Everyone
Days
Questions
" My sense of what a book should be has changed so radically. I like to think for the better. "
E. L. Doctorow
Book
Like
Better
" In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere. "
E. L. Doctorow
You
Go
Know
" In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment. "
E. L. Doctorow
People
Relationships
Always
" History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. "
E. L. Doctorow
History
Generation
People
" It seems to me that in literature, books have always been answers to other books. "
E. L. Doctorow
Books
Always
Answers
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Music
Along
Brain
" My theory about why Hemingway killed himself is that he heard his own voice; that he reached the point where he couldn't write without feeling he was repeating himself. That's the worst thing that can happen to a writer. "
E. L. Doctorow
Why
Feeling
Worst
" I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority. "
E. L. Doctorow
Culture
Authority
Then
" We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy. "
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Raw
Little
Where
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Justice
Money
Play
" I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation. "
E. L. Doctorow
Number
Moderation
Which
" Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially. "
E. L. Doctorow
Forms
Writing
Short