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.
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Other Quotes by "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.
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From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions that don't seem to have an answer that everyone agrees on.
Tags: answer, everyone, questions, always
There are two books that impressed me when I was very young. One was 'The Adventures of Augie March' - the idea of having something so generous, and so adventurous and improvisatory. The other was 'The U.S.A. Trilogy,' by John Dos Passos.
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Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
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I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it actually slowed me up for a while because it's so easy to revise, I tended to stay on the same page. I've learned to discipline myself.
Tags: discipline, me, cool, myself
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