E. L. Doctorow Quotes

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.

Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

My job is to put words together and tell a story. If that doesn't work for you, it's not a war crime.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

Rarely does a complete idea come to me. I basically start with just a small scene or a snatch of dialogue and force myself to write and to keep writing. Sometimes it becomes a book.

I'm open to writing just about anything. I love writing the books that I write. They do tend to be on dark subjects, but I don't think of myself necessarily as a dark-humored person. I like having a lot of fun.

My method is, I just sit down and write a book.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is to write the book that you would want to read, and hope other people agree.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Write the best book you can, the one that demands to be written, no matter what genre it is. Even a trend the trades tell you has gone stale can be revitalized by a superb piece of writing. It'll never be revitalized by someone jumping on a trend bandwagon.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

Structure that really pays off is all based on emotion. I don't write down an elaborate plan. It's really done by feel. It's one area of my writing that I think I've got surer at as I've evolved.

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.