E. L. Doctorow Quotes

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

When I sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not very much care, how it is to end.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

It's that drama that drives authors, you know.

Part of a writer's job is just spacing out, looking into the air and imagining things.

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.

I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.

I've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.

I think all my films have a different journey. Therefore, I take it as it comes.

When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen.

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.

I've been told it's hard to write about singing. I didn't realize that going into it. I might not have tried if I knew!

I think that feels like it to me. I mean whenever you talk about writing I think you have to remember that it all has a big question mark over it - every word has a big question mark over it.