E. L. Doctorow Quotes

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

When I write, I tend to be quite cut off from the world. At that point of time, I'm not thinking about editors, publishers or readers. I write the story the way it comes to me.

Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.

I work every day until I do not have more to say. I learned from Graham Greene that a very good way is to stop work in the middle of a sentence. Then you know exactly how to continue the day after.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words.

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.

When I write, I don't like to be around any humans.

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task - based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote.

I think most writers will say that at the start of each book they think, 'I'm not sure I can do this.' But eventually, you reach a magical point where the story suddenly becomes real to you, and you become totally invested in it.

To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.

When you're writing, you're in a totally different zone... I can start a difficult poem and look up at the clock and see to my astonishment that three hours have passed.

For a writer, its very attractive to stay in one world for a time.

I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it, and I've always been ok at that.

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating.

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I going to write this, am I going to be able to write this, what is this image about - and I'm thinking about it all the time, but I'm not really inside it, inside the writing.

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word.

While writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book.

When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.

When really writing I'm not a good friend. Because writing disorganizes the social self, you become atomized. It scrambles you, sometimes to the point that I'm incapable of speech. I feel that if I start speaking, I'll lose the writing, like getting off the treadmill.