E. L. Doctorow

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. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#belong #commas #detest #found #gave

I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#lose #prepare #speech #thought #would

I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#bad #experience #i #i can #most

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

#around #go #go home #home #i

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

#driving #further #headlights #like #make

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

#find #had #i #learn #myself

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

#brain #line #make #music #rhythm

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#happened #historian #like #novelist #tell

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

#century #made #need #reason #terrifying

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

#dangerous #fact #far #front #games