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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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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
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More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.
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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Boxing is rough. Even if you win, you get hurt.
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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When a marriage ends, who is left to understand it?
Joyce Carol Oates
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For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Every scar in my face is worth it.
Joyce Carol Oates
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It's hard to say how we compare to other people. We each inhabit our own personalities. I have often felt that I'm a very neutral being and that I have almost no personality. I'm drawn to writing partly because I'm fascinated by the mimetic process.
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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The best revenge is living well without you.
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Boxing has become America's tragic theater.
Joyce Carol Oates
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My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.
Joyce Carol Oates
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A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him.
Joyce Carol Oates
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It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
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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Yet I will make you all love me and I will punish myself to spite your love.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way.
Joyce Carol Oates