E.L. Doctorow passed away last week Wednesday, July 22, 2015, at age 84. Doctorow was a heavy smoker and died of complications involving lung cancer. He was born in the Bronx on January 6, 1931. His parents were second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish extraction and named their son Edgar after Edgar Allen Poe.
Doctorow wrote twelve novels and taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Yale School of Drama, the University of Utah, the University of California, Irvine, and Princeton University. Quotes by Doctorow:
“Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.”
“I get intrigued by a first line and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries just the way the reader does, so you’re simultaneously the writer and the reader.”
What is your favorite E.L. Doctorow quote? I like the one about you’re simultaneously the writer and the reader.
