Edgar Lawrence “E. L.” Doctorow (1931–2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known internationally for his works of historical fiction. He has been described as one of the most important American novelists of the 20th century.
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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
Topics: Creativity
History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.
—E. L. Doctorow
Topics: History
I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.
—E. L. Doctorow
Topics: Experience
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.
—E. L. Doctorow
Topics: Fiction, Authors & Writing
Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own.
—E. L. Doctorow
Topics: World
Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
—E. L. Doctorow
Topics: Crime, Criminals
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
—E. L. Doctorow
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
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
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
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
Topics: Writing, Writers
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
Murders 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.
—E. L. Doctorow
Topics: Murder
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