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EL Doctorow
EL Doctorow: ‘I don’t have a style, but the books do.’ Photograph: Giuseppe Giglia/EPA
EL Doctorow: ‘I don’t have a style, but the books do.’ Photograph: Giuseppe Giglia/EPA

EL Doctorow in quotes: 15 of his best

This article is more than 8 years old

El Doctorow, who has died in New York aged 84, was a master of the historical novel but also the authorly soundbite – here are some of his most illuminating thoughts about writer and readers

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

A new reader shouldn’t be able to find you in your work, though someone who’s read more may begin to.

I don’t have a style, but the books do. Each demands its own method of presentation, and I like that.

When you’re writing a book, you don’t really think about it critically. You don’t want to know too well what you’re doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it. The book is constructed as a conversation, with someone doing most of the talking and someone doing most of the listening.

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.

In the 20th 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.

Suffering isn’t a moral endowment. People don’t always do well under duress.

I think of my politics as biblical politics: you shouldn’t murder, you shouldn’t steal, that sort of thing.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons – I don’t think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn’t need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

We’re always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it’s a little raw and nervy.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

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.

A physical book is great technology if you think about it. Once it’s produced it doesn’t use up any energy, and if you take decent care of it, it will last for ever. That’s a considerable technological achievement.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

A book is not complete until it’s read. The reader’s mind flows through sentences as through a circuit – it illuminates them and brings them to life.

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