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" 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
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" I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority. "
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" 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. "
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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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" Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. "
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" The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity. "
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" 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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" Movies are too literal. "
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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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" 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
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" 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
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" I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech. "
E. L. Doctorow
Lose
Prepare
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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. "
E. L. Doctorow
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Learn
" 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
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" 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. "
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Place
Work
" When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you. "
E. L. Doctorow
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" To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving. "
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Immensely
Peers
Moving
" 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
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" I've outlasted many marriages at Random House. "
E. L. Doctorow
House
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" 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
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" I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist. "
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Like
Myself
" 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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Way
Find
First
" Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society. "
E. L. Doctorow
Like
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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. "
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" Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. "
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Planning
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" 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. "
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Like
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" In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere. "
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" 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. "
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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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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