Quotes by E. Doctorow

• I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.
• Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
• 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.
• I thought I would lose, so I didn't prepare a speech.
• I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks.
• 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.
• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
• It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
• Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
• 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.
• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
• We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.
• There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
• Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
• 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.