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A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'

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
Degree
Biography
Degrees
Nonfiction
Fiction
Biographies
Memories
Contains
High
Typical
Upon
Invented
Anecdotes
Individual
Considered
Relying
Individuals
Notorious

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Writing is the most solitary of arts.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I don't believe in predestination - except for genetic predilections.
Joyce Carol Oates
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My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.
Joyce Carol Oates
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If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.
Joyce Carol Oates
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If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is the most haunting of her life, though it is one-sided and ends in tragedy.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The despairing soul is a rebel.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Betrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I'm nobody's daughter now. I'm through with that.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The books I read I do enjoy, very much otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.
Joyce Carol Oates
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After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I always tell my students the same thing. And that's to live life, and to read very voraciously without any definite program. To travel, to meet people, to talk to people, to listen very carefully, and not interrupt, but listen to their own grandparents speak of their families.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole.
Joyce Carol Oates