162 Quotes by E. L. Doctorow

I knew he was the real thing because when he laughed other men at the table laughed with him.

Langley would never complete his newspaper project. I knew that and I’m sure he knew it as well. It was a crazy foolish hand-rubbing scheme that kept his mind in the mood he liked to be in.

And why? Is our genius only in our wombs? Can we not write books and create learned scholarship and perform music and provide philosophical models for the betterment of mankind?

And now I will tell of the revels that went on for three nights and two days in the brothel on West Seventy-sixth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues.

There is great human shame when people die before they are ready. It’s as if their living didn’t matter at all.

It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

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.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.