A Quote by E. L. Doctorow
The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
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The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.
You can't predict it all. People will tell you to plan things out as best you can. They will tell you to focus. They will tell you to follow your dreams. They will all be right.
I always tell young filmmakers, don't go make a feature. Make a short. When you're ready to make a feature, people will tell you. Your friends will tell you. Your fans will tell you. Festivals will tell you. Listen to your audience.
It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.
There are some people who will tell you oil is the greatest thing that ever happened to Nigeria. And there are other people who will tell you it's the worst thing that ever happened.
The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.
Tell me what you fear and I will tell you what has happened to you.
If you find something to tell, tell it to your truest, though that make little to tell; the truer you speak, the more you will know to tell.
What I can't tell with a photo I will tell with a painting, and what I can't tell with a painting I will tell with a video or text sometimes, et cetera.
I tell you a joke to have you listen to me, and then maybe I will tell you another joke that we can laugh together and feel equal. And then I will tell you a story hopefully that will make you cry. So I think that's the way that I approach the columns, as a surviving tool in a way.
My God loves everybody, and if yours doesn't, that's your prerogative, but don't tell me how to live my life and don't tell my best friends that you're going to take away their rights. Because I will march you into the ground. I will argue you into the ground. I will petition you into the ground. I will not sleep, I will not stop, and neither will so many people in this country and in this world. It's not right.
We are the silver people, the Mongols. When they ask, tell them there are no tribes. Tell them I am khan of the sea of grass, and they will know me by that name, as Genghis. Yes, tell them that. Tell them that I am Genghis and I will ride.
This is why I shall not tell you in this story about all the days when nothing happened. You will not catch me saying, 'thus the sad days passed slowly by'--or 'the years rolled on their weary course'--or 'time went on'--because it is silly; of course time goes on--whether you say so or not. So I shall just tell you the nice, interesting parts--and in between you will understand that we had our meals and got up and went to bed, and dull things like that.
...I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.
If you tell people, 'that old banger of yours, we're going to tax the hell out of it,' they'll rightly tell you to get lost. But if you tell people that when they next buy a car, the tax will be adjusted so that the cleanest ones will cost less and the polluting ones will cost more, most people would say 'fair enough.'
Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.
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