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" 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. "

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" I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it actually slowed me up for a while because it's so easy to revise, I tended to stay on the same page. I've learned to discipline myself. "

E. L. Doctorow

Myself

Black

Thought

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist. "

E. L. Doctorow

Perhaps

Myself

" There are two books that impressed me when I was very young. One was 'The Adventures of Augie March' - the idea of having something so generous, and so adventurous and improvisatory. The other was 'The U.S.A. Trilogy,' by John Dos Passos. "

E. L. Doctorow

Books

Idea

" I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere. "

E. L. Doctorow

You

Know

" The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like. "

" It seems to me that in literature, books have always been answers to other books. "

" I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation. "

" I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer. "

" It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. "

" I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad. "

" 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

Long

Need

" 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. "

" Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. "

" 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. "

" Movies are too literal. "

" 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

Way

Face

" I've outlasted many marriages at Random House. "

" When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you. "

" 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. "