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" 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
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" The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity. "
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" To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving. "
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" The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like. "
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" I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. "
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" 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. "
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Identity
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" If we ever find out how the brain works, with all its complexity, then we will be able to build a machine that has consciousness. And if that happens, that is a road to planetary disaster because everything we've thought about ourselves, since the Bronze Age, the Bible, all of that will be gone. "
E. L. Doctorow
Road
Age
Thought
" 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
" Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society. "
E. L. Doctorow
Like
Society
Politics
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Games
Newspaper
Page
" 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
" 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
" It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. "
E. L. Doctorow
Way
Car
Driving
" Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. "
E. L. Doctorow
Raining
Feeling
Fact
" 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 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Reading
Book
Think
" 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
" 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
Me
" My sense of what a book should be has changed so radically. I like to think for the better. "
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Book
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" I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks. "
E. L. Doctorow
Hell
I Am
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" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Time
Lunch
Know
" Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction. "
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Composition
Music
You
" 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
" 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. "
E. L. Doctorow
Think
Writing
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