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When I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family life and the lies of certain individuals close to me, with the detachment of time. I wanted to tell the truth about secrets: How much pain they give, yet how much relief, even happiness we may feel when at last the motive for secrecy has passed.

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
Motive
Life
Looks
Tell
Lying
Relief
Enough
Truth
Lasts
Passed
Feel
Certain
Happiness
Individuals
Feels
Give
Last
Wrote
Giving
May
Upon
Lies
Detachment
Even
Back
Family
Close
Secrecy
Much
Wanted
Pain
Secrets
Time
Look
Individual
Secret

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I love insult, it's always honest.
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One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.
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Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.
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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.
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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.
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Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.
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It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.
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Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.
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The best revenge is living well without you.
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The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.
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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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Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.
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On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.
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Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct?
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celebrate while you can
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My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.
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Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.
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I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.
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Perhaps the inevitable tragedy of our complex civilization is that we must be specialists in our fields - and our fields have become increasingly difficult, so that communication is nearly impossible.
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Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's 'Requiem Mass.' You know, it's very beautiful and elevated thoughts and some measure of dignity. I didn't have that experience at all. I had one pratfall after another.
Joyce Carol Oates