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I love insult, it's always honest.

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
Insult
Honest
Always
Love

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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Why is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind?
Joyce Carol Oates
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That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.
Joyce Carol Oates
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To choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration.
Joyce Carol Oates
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...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Near the point of impact, time acelerates to the speed of light.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Exotic: meaning you're desired. For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness. So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.
Joyce Carol Oates
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It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.
Joyce Carol Oates
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One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.
Joyce Carol Oates
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If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The best revenge is living well without you.
Joyce Carol Oates
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By the way of connecting with subject, with theme, I was able to find a kind of lifeline. Writing's like a lifeline. You have to get the right way in. Otherwise the material just lies there, and you can't do anything with it.
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
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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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Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Flying fosters fantasies of childhood, of omnipotence, rapid shifts of being, miraculous moments it stirs our capacity for dreaming.
Joyce Carol Oates
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It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.
Joyce Carol Oates