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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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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
Writing
Somehow
Changes
Begin
Card
Activity
Exhausted
Playing
Utterly
Felt
Thin
Soul
Forced
Everything
Cards

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.
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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I could EAT YOUR HEART & asshole you'd never know it.
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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The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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?
Joyce Carol Oates
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To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.
Joyce Carol Oates
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If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel 'Black Water,' I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.
Joyce Carol Oates
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When I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day. At those times, it's as though I'm writing a letter to someone I'm desperately in love with.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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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The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible to me voice, unexpectedly.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored or damned with condescending praise.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Why is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind?
Joyce Carol Oates
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Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.
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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I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.
Joyce Carol Oates