E. L. Doctorow - Writing Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

View all E. L. Doctorow Quotes

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.

E. L. Doctorow

A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen. Except the act of writing.

E. L. Doctorow

When you're talking about a story you're writing it. You're sending it out into the air, it's finished, it's gone.

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

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

I thought of myself as a writer for years before I got around to writing anything.

E. L. Doctorow