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 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
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
Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
– E. L. Doctorow
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
– E. L. Doctorow
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
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
– 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 nervy.
– E. L. Doctorow
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
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
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.