E. L. Doctorow in: Sunbeams June 2001, issue 306, Sun Magazine
“

You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again.

— E. L. Doctorow on Silhouette

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again." in the context of "E. L. Doctorow in: Sunbeams June 2001, issue 306, Sun Magazine" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Silhouette" (Quotes: Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author, A - F) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
E. L. Doctorow

About E. L. Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (6 January 1931 - July 21, 2015) is an American author of several critically acclaimed novels that blend history and social criticism. He held the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University.