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Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside.

Joyce Carol Oates

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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Lockport
New York
Books
Safely
Child
Spaces
Space
Temple
Young
Temples
Might
Lover
Book
Lovers
Children
Indeed
Even
Sacred
Reside

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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Whoever was stupid was beneath worry or thought you did not have to figure them out. This eliminated hundreds of people. In this life you had time only for a certain amount of thinking, and there was no need to waste any of it on people who were not threatening.
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The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.
Joyce Carol Oates
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God's blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Before I undertake a lengthy project, I have usually given much thought to it over a period of years. My files are filled with likely subjects - which perhaps, one day, I will develop.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it was terrible we had no anti-lynching laws, and he was also a feminist, and he was also very concerned with anti-Semitism. He was a good man, but he was hard on himself.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I'm very American in the sense of being an explorer. America is filled with people who are interested in exploring landscapes, either external or internal. A westward nation of explorers.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I don't know whether I am different from other people. Perhaps I am. Perhaps no one has a personality, and people are inventing themselves in the context in which they find themselves.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening, and not reading, quite fascinating.
Joyce Carol Oates
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After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
Joyce Carol Oates
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How lawyers make work for one another! You're all priests, worshipping the same god. No wonder you adore one another.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Near the point of impact, time acelerates to the speed of light.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The American dream is a multi-metaphor made up of distinct regions. Many regions of this country are almost like different countries. Even in one state, northern and southern California are like two separate countries.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Death is just the last scene of the last act.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.
Joyce Carol Oates
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There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.
Joyce Carol Oates
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As soon as I moved to Princeton in 1978, I became fascinated by local history, much of it Revolutionary War-era and I became fascinated by the presidency of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as a comment on race relations in America more generally: we are 'roommates' with one another, but how well do we know one another?
Joyce Carol Oates