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" Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway. "
E. L. Doctorow
Saying
Great Man
Great
Related Quotes:
" I'm not the sort of writer who can walk into a party and take a look around, see who's sleeping with whom and go home and write a novel about society. It's not the way I work. "
E. L. Doctorow
Party
Home
Look
" 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
" 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
" The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like. "
E. L. Doctorow
Felt
You
Will
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Driving
Fog
Night
" 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
" I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page. "
E. L. Doctorow
Like
Long
Need
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Way
Find
First
" In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere. "
E. L. Doctorow
You
Go
Know
" When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences. "
E. L. Doctorow
Like
Way
Face
" Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society. "
E. L. Doctorow
Like
Society
Politics
" 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
" We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy. "
E. L. Doctorow
Raw
Little
Where
" Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction. "
E. L. Doctorow
Composition
Music
You
" 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
" 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
" 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
" To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving. "
E. L. Doctorow
Immensely
Peers
Moving
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Reason
Because
Writer
" Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. "
E. L. Doctorow
Planning
Doing
Writing
" A new reader shouldn't be able to find you in your work, though someone who's read more may begin to. "
E. L. Doctorow
More
New
Find
" The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity. "
E. L. Doctorow
Nature
Good
Fiction
" 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
Play
Justice
Feel
" I've outlasted many marriages at Random House. "
E. L. Doctorow
House
Many
Marriages
" I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech. "
E. L. Doctorow
Lose
Prepare
Speech
" 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
" I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation. "
E. L. Doctorow
Number
Moderation
Which