E. L. Doctorow quote: "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."

The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity.
E. L. DOCTOROW

If we ever find out how the brain works, with all its complexity, then we will be able to build a ma...
E. L. DOCTOROW

The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That&...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I t...
E. L. DOCTOROW

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the p...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I have a number of vices, one of which is moderation.
E. L. DOCTOROW

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think o...
E. L. DOCTOROW

A period of time is as much an organising principle for a work of fiction as a sense of place. You c...
E. L. DOCTOROW

When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the windo...
E. L. DOCTOROW

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
E. L. DOCTOROW

Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.
E. L. DOCTOROW

I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers s...
E. L. DOCTOROW

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
E. L. DOCTOROW

We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotat...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're do...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I got married very early, and in no time at all, we had three children. And it seemed to me I had an...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the paper...
E. L. DOCTOROW

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
E. L. DOCTOROW

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we n...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
E. L. DOCTOROW

It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the w...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.
E. L. DOCTOROW

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the per...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after s...
E. L. DOCTOROW

You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the detail...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
E. L. DOCTOROW

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
E. L. DOCTOROW

It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make t...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated an...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it t...
E. L. DOCTOROW

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the per...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Suffering isn't a moral endowment. People don't always do well under duress, and it seemed t...
E. L. DOCTOROW

If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

We dress them [children] in the presumptions of the world. They are the bright small face of hope. T...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Not really, ... There is no Carl. I made him up.
E. L. DOCTOROW

Its glory is all moonshine.
E. L. DOCTOROW

So what this is is a 'road novel.' Eventually entire civilization (in the South) had been uprooted a...
E. L. DOCTOROW

The wretched war had destroyed not only their country but all their presumptions of human self-regar...
E. L. DOCTOROW

For some reason that excited me.
E. L. DOCTOROW

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing,...
E. L. DOCTOROW

We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and ner...
E. L. DOCTOROW

The thing about this march is it was totally different than the rest of the war, as bloody and bruta...
E. L. DOCTOROW

He was a brilliant man, a complex man. The march justified him as a military man, but he had a great...
E. L. DOCTOROW

You could go for miles without seeing an end to the procession of troops and horses and wagons, ... ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

You can't do that to Carl.
E. L. DOCTOROW

It seemed to me so much more sensible to make something up than go through the tedious business of i...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Mayb...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I don't see any point in making a big fuss about it. I just said, 'No, thank you.'
E. L. DOCTOROW

My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest perform...
E. L. DOCTOROW

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

Movies are too literal.
E. L. DOCTOROW

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had los...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Things that appear on the front page of the newspaper as 'fact' are far more dangerous than ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

A new reader shouldn't be able to find you in your work, though someone who's read more may ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

My theory about why Hemingway killed himself is that he heard his own voice; that he reached the poi...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.
E. L. DOCTOROW

I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just sayi...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discov...
E. L. DOCTOROW

There are two books that impressed me when I was very young. One was 'The Adventures of Augie Ma...
E. L. DOCTOROW

Somewhere along the line the rhythms and tonalities of music elided in my brain with the sounds that...
E. L. DOCTOROW

I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
E. L. DOCTOROW

In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere.
E. L. DOCTOROW

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

To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving.
E. L. DOCTOROW

My sense of what a book should be has changed so radically. I like to think for the better.
E. L. DOCTOROW

I've outlasted many marriages at Random House.
E. L. DOCTOROW

People come out of the mid-west and go to the Ivy League. I kind of reversed the direction.
E. L. DOCTOROW

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to ...
E. L. DOCTOROW

From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions tha...
E. L. DOCTOROW

The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wa...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

When I began writing in the mid-1960s, I thought it was not important for readers to know whether I ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

Readers let me know that they like books that have more to them than meets the eye. Had they not let...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' ch...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I wr...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

I was the first one in my family to go away to college. I came from a small town where there was no ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

I get ideas for my books from people I know and what happens to them, from places I've been and ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

Art comes from a visceral need and is usually generated by something I have seen; writing comes from...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

I think most of us are outsiders. And I think that's good because it makes you question things.
E. L. KONIGSBURG

I was born in New York City. But my family moved when I was still an infant. Except for a year and h...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon, I wanted to be a chemist. So I became one. I worked in a l...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

Growing up in a small town gives you two things: a sense of place and a feeling of self-consciousnes...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

I never set out to do this - getting to No. 1 in the 'New York Times' bestseller list wasn&#...
E. L. JAMES

I'm a bit of a control freak.
E. L. JAMES

Yes, I'm a 'Twi-hard.' I became obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. I didn't watch televi...
E. L. JAMES

I see myself as a story teller.
E. L. JAMES

I hate having my photograph taken.
E. L. JAMES

Everyone's clamoring for the fourth book in the 'Fifty Shades' trilogy, which makes me l...
E. L. JAMES

I've worked in television all my life, but really I've always wanted to work in the movies.
E. L. JAMES

I don't watch much British television at all. I mean, it's ironic because I used to work in ...
E. L. JAMES

If you've been married for 400 years, as I have, it's nice to experience first love again an...
E. L. JAMES

I've set the bar quite high in terms of storytelling.
E. L. JAMES

I think women love to read love stories.
E. L. JAMES

I'm looking forward to getting back to my house and my Ugg boots and not washing sometimes, and ...
E. L. JAMES

I'm not a great writer.
E. L. JAMES

I came up with a story and I wrote it.
E. L. JAMES

Once you're in charge of your job, your house, your children, getting the food on the table, doi...
E. L. JAMES

All a writer wants is to be read, and people are so flattering and lovely. I mean, there are witches...
E. L. JAMES

Write for yourself. That's it. And write every day.
E. L. JAMES

God forbid that women have fantasies.
E. L. JAMES

I really like clever men who challenge you.
E. L. JAMES

Women basically want the same thing - a good passionate story, a great fantasy - and for our partner...
E. L. JAMES

I value my anonymity. I'm happy to come in on the tube or the train and watch other people readi...
E. L. JAMES

I think women love a passionate love story.
E. L. JAMES

Often the search proves more profitable than the goal.
E. L. KONIGSBURG

The true greatness of a nation is not measured by the vastness of its territory, or by the multitude...
L. E. BLAZE

I think it's important to experience kindness so that you can experience it more in the future. ...
E. L. KONIGSBURG

Often the search proves more profitable than the goal.
E. L. KONIGSBURG

If Dr. [John A. T.] Robinson is right in saying that "God is teaching us that we must live as men wh...
E. L. MASCALL

Commemoration of Eglantine Jebb, Social Reformer, Founder of 'Save the Children', 1928 I do not w...
E. L. MASCALL

Enough has... been said to show that the impoverished secularized versions of Christianity which are...
E. L. MASCALL

Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary Even the most traditional theologian wil...
E. L. MASCALL

Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: In the rare cases where faith appea...
E. L. MASCALL

Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: The critical scholar is not committe...
E. L. MASCALL

Beginning a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: If we are prepared to admit, even as ...
E. L. MASCALL

Feast of Mark the Evangelist There are, of course, interesting questions that can be asked about t...
E. L. MASCALL

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin. It should make you jump up and do something.
E. L. SIMPSON

As the majestic pearl is formed inside a clam through much irritation, so are you being formed throu...
E. L. MCDOWELL

Making decisions in anger is like spitting in the wind; it comes back and hits you in the face.
E. L. MCDOWELL

Struggles are really opportunities for your next level.
E. L. MCDOWELL

Boredom is the result of lacking focus.
E. L. MCDOWELL

Prosperity is a mindset.
E. L. MCDOWELL

The greatest challenge man will face is himself.
E. L. MCDOWELL

State of mind determines destination.
E. L. MCDOWELL

Take nothing or no one for granted, for what is predictable today will one day become unpredictable ...
E. L. MCDOWELL

Build a man's ego and you'll win his favor; crush a man's ego and you'll receive much grief from him...
E. L. MCDOWELL

Time is an advocate for truth.
E. L. MCDOWELL

Antagonists come with all life progression.
E. L. MCDOWELL

Closed doors present other opportunities!
E. L. MCDOWELL

Existence is the greatest opportunity one can have; so why settle for a mediocre state of being?
E. L. MCDOWELL

You were my marital bliss,” he said to me this morning. “You can be again!” You know what I an...
E. L. NEVE

The movie that changed my life,' he liked to say, by which he meant that it had changed his wardrobe...
E. L. NEVE

If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.
CORY DOCTOROW

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
E.L. DOCTOROW

He had them as spellbound as a room full of Ewoks listening to C-3PO.
CORY DOCTOROW

This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.
CORY DOCTOROW

Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find ...
E.L. DOCTOROW

my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity
CORY DOCTOROW

It's hard not to like Asimov; he's a really likable guy.
CORY DOCTOROW

The other one I did was 'I, Robot.' I take apart Isaac Asimov's Robots world.
CORY DOCTOROW

Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor.
CORY DOCTOROW

Put simply, I want to treat my readers as partners and not crooks. There is no future in calling you...
CORY DOCTOROW

No one should do a job he can do in his sleep.
CORY DOCTOROW

It's not necessarily about what career you pick. It's about how you do what you do.
CORY DOCTOROW

Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor.
CORY DOCTOROW

Abnormal is so common, it's practically normal.
CORY DOCTOROW

Engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff.
CORY DOCTOROW

All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.
CORY DOCTOROW

It's a story of little girls who are pressed into working in sweat shops in games, who spend all...
CORY DOCTOROW

This seemed insanely limiting. So ... Yahoo tells me to deliberately keep a large number of users fr...
CORY DOCTOROW

The EU and the world are experiencing a revolution in creativity thanks to the Internet, ... An enti...
CORY DOCTOROW

Finally, in the short term it's really obvious. People need to hear about my book, and if they've fo...
CORY DOCTOROW

[Has it been a success though, I ask.] I don't know, ... I don't have another first novel that wasn'...
CORY DOCTOROW

is it any different to loaning a book to someone? There was a book in the US ( Secrets of the Ya Ya ...
CORY DOCTOROW

There are people already sharing eBooks out there, ... and they do it simply because they love books...
CORY DOCTOROW

Previously, such jottings might have been kept in the author's notebook but something amazing happen...
CORY DOCTOROW

This is a fascinating phenomenon that evolved through the unexpected use of technology. It classical...
CORY DOCTOROW

DRM is already widely deployed without a hint of success and the NAVSHP group has the opportunity to...
CORY DOCTOROW

There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.
E.L. DOCTOROW

– Here, take this. It'll give you a boost.
– You spent 90 gold on this??
– 90 gold...
CORY DOCTOROW

YA doesn't get librarians fired!
CORY DOCTOROW

Every good thing comes to some kind of end, and then the really good things come to a beginning agai...
CORY DOCTOROW

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still freeand we're not. Guess who's winning the "...
CORY DOCTOROW

The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one had ever been put to death in Socrates' nam...
E.L. DOCTOROW

Blooks differ from books in several ways
CORY DOCTOROW

If I am going to be a writer, earning a living in the era of digital text, I need to understand wher...
CORY DOCTOROW

There are answers that cover the short, medium and long term. Everyone needs to realise that the thi...
CORY DOCTOROW

Blogs encourage their authors to publish in small, partially formed chunks,
CORY DOCTOROW

But this is just the start of something much bigger.
CORY DOCTOROW

What little empirical evidence is out there points to eBooks and free downloading increases sales on...
CORY DOCTOROW

What petulant jerks. Look, Sony, you got caught sleazing your customers' computers. Telling us that ...
CORY DOCTOROW

It does the thing that all great non-fiction needs to do — makes a subject interesting because of ...
CORY DOCTOROW

And it is promotion. My publisher, Tor Books, have some modern methods that allow them to make a pro...
CORY DOCTOROW

if I want to enable my readers push copies to their friends, and they're in circles like Slashdot, W...
CORY DOCTOROW

[What is the new is the creative process involved in producing a blook.] Blogs encourage their autho...
CORY DOCTOROW

Every telecomm company is as big a corporate welfare bum as you could ask for. Try to imagine what i...
CORY DOCTOROW

I had this really great amazing thing happen where I almost finished the book and I really needed to...
CORY DOCTOROW

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can...
E.L. DOCTOROW

I watched bulls bred to cows, watched mares foal, I saw life come from the egg and the multiplicativ...
E.L. DOCTOROW

It's our goddamed city! It's our goddamed country. No terrorist can take it from us for so long as w...
CORY DOCTOROW

Most of the people you see going to work today are LARPing (live-action role playing) an incredibly ...
CORY DOCTOROW

the problem with reading off a screen isn’t resolution, eyestrain, or compatibility with reading i...
CORY DOCTOROW

Face-book has all the social graces of a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, standing at the thr...
CORY DOCTOROW

What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of li...
CORY DOCTOROW

If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's nothing like it in the whole world. When ...
CORY DOCTOROW

... the Kindle is a "roach motel" device: its license terms and DRM ensure that books can check in, ...
CORY DOCTOROW

And that's the real reason the powerful fear open systems and networks. If anyone can set up a free ...
CORY DOCTOROW

The US traded its manufacturing sector’s health for its entertainment industry, hoping that Police...
CORY DOCTOROW

I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three errone...
CORY DOCTOROW

Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves dire...
CORY DOCTOROW

She's some kind of Socialist-anarchist-anarcho-syndicalist-Communist. Unless you're one of them you ...
E.L. DOCTOROW

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.

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E. L. Doctorow

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.

E. L. Doctorow

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