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For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

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
Much
Crowded
Motion
Confused
Slow
Lifetime
Terminated
Happiness
Summarize
Words
Starks
Pain
Stark

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My life is a very interior and solitary life. I tend not to care that much about external things.
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I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.
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I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband.
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Much in our lives is chance.
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A daydreamer is prepared for most things.
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To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.
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America is a very religious nation. Not a mono-religious nation because there are many different strands of belief, but there's something about this nation that inspires people, or perhaps draws people, who are strongly idealistic.
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The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.
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I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?
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I love insult, it's always honest.
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The quiet people just do their work.
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Language is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?If it were not for language, could we lie?
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It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.
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After love a formal feeling comes.
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Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.
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Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.
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Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible to me voice, unexpectedly.
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One man's insanity is another man's genius someday the world will recognize the genius in my insanity.
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When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.
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It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.
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