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If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in line frequently these days, while on the phone having been 'put on hold.'

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
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Lockport
New York
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Favorite
Fireplace
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Fireplaces
Waiting
Line
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Airplane
Even
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Frequently
Cold
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Hold
Phones

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.
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Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?
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The quiet people just do their work.
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The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to overcome doubt.
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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.
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I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.
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In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.
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At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.
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Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?
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My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.
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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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Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.
Joyce Carol Oates
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These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.
Joyce Carol Oates
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My life is a very interior and solitary life. I tend not to care that much about external things.
Joyce Carol Oates
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After love a formal feeling comes.
Joyce Carol Oates
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It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson did have a stroke as a relatively young man of 39 and seemed always to be ill. He was 'high-strung' - intensely neurotic - yet a charismatic personality nonetheless.
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These are the moments for which we live.
Joyce Carol Oates