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E. L. Doctorow Quotes (1931-2015)
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About E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (6 January 1931 - July 21, 2015) is an American author of several critically acclaimed novels that blend history and social criticism. He held the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University.
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βWriting is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.β
βI try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.β
βThere is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; thereβs only narrative.β
βWriting is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.β
βLike art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.β
βHistory is the present. Thatβs why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.β
βItβs like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.β
βPlanning to write is not writing. Outlining ...researching ...talking to people about what youβre doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.β
βIn the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state... Itβs become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.β
βYou canβt remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again.β
βMurders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after seeing one in the street young couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon because murders are enlivened sermons to be analyzed and considered and relished, they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion, murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.β
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E. L. Doctorow on Moby-Dick
βI can assure you Ernest Hemingway was wrong when he said modern American literature began with Huckleberry Finn. It begins with Moby-Dick, the book that swallowed European civilization whole.β
E. L. Doctorow on Silhouette
βYou can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again.β
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E. L. Doctorow on Sigmund Freud
βA few professional alienists understood his importance, but to most of the public he appeared as some kind of German sexologist, an exponent of free love who used big words to talk about dirty things. At least a decade would have to pass before Freud would have his revenge and see his ideas begin to destroy sex in America forever.β
Quotes About E. L. Doctorow
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Maaza Mengiste on E. L. Doctorow
βOne of the writers who has especially influenced me is the great American novelist E. L. Doctorow. On the level of craft, the fearless way he structures his stories and views the world, the way he writes about the working class, poverty, aspiration, all while taking creative risksβrepeatedlyβreading his books has been absolutely pivotal for me as a writer.β
Ruth Wisse on E. L. Doctorow
βThe energy of American Jewish writers was so charged, so buoyant, that for a time they appeared to dominate American fiction. But there was so little Jewish energy in this art that one could invent parlor games over the ethnic or religious identity of its authors: Edna Ferber? Waldo Frank? Lillian Hellman? Nathanael West? Norman Mailer? E. L. Doctorow?β
About E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (6 January 1931 - July 21, 2015) is an American author of several critically acclaimed novels that blend history and social criticism. He held the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University.