“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
“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 Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
“Murders are exciting and lift people into a heart-beating awe as religion is supposed to do, after seeing one in the street young couples will go back to bed and make love, people will cross themselves and thank God for the gift of their stuporous lives, old folks will talk to each other over cups of hot water with lemon because murders are enlivened sermons to be analyzed and considered and relished, they speak to the timid of the dangers of rebellion, murders are perceived as momentary descents of God and so provide joy and hope and righteous satisfaction to parishioners, who will talk about them for years afterward to anyone who will listen.”E.L. Doctorow book Billy BathgateBilly Bathgate (1989), Ch. 19
“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.”E.L. Doctorow Interview in Writers at Work (1988)