Quotes from E. L. Doctorow

Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway.

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

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.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

We are all good friends. Friendship is what endures. Shared ideals, respect for the whole character of a human being.

Longing, the hope for fulfillment, is the one unwavering passion of the world's commerce.

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

I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.

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.

Writing a novel 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.

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

God has raised his hand to give us respite. It could be he has something more in mind for us. With this time on our hands, we should try to figure out what it could be. Because HE don't do pointless acts of charity.

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

The marriage seemed to flourish on Father's extended absences. " Ragtime

A book is not complete until it's read

All writers are unaffiliated. The novelist, the poet, will understand the institutions they live within, including their religious traditions, as aggregate historically amended fictions. Appointing themselves as witnesses, they are necessarily independent of all institutions, including the institution of the family-which may be why nothing makes family members more nervous than the discovery that one of them is a writer.

Freud] sat in his quiet cozy study in Vienna, glad to be back. He said to Ernest Jones, America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake." Ragtime

These officials changed names they couldn't pronounce and tore people from their families, consigning to a return voyage old folks, people with bad eyes, riffraff and also those who looked insolent. Such power was dazzling. The immigrants were reminded of home. " Ragtime

The way I work] is like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. (The Paris Review, Winter 1986, No. 101)

The historian will tell you what happened. The Novelist will tell you what it felt like. And the historical fiction writer does both!

Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.

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. I did that with 'World's Fair,' as with all of them. The inventions of the book come as discoveries.

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

A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.