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The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.

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
Leaves
Rules
Soon
Painfully
Game
Grieving
Games
Guests
Party
Observe
Doe
Uncomfortable
Play
Suicide

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Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious-why are we born? why when and as we are?-so too are the beginnings of works of art and of artists.
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I love insult, it's always honest.
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Art is the highest expression of the human spirit.
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The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.
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I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.
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I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.
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Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.
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I think what distresses me most in my life is that I have so many ideas I consider exciting ideas that I will never live to execute because it takes me so long to execute.
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The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to overcome doubt.
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Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.
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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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I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.
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Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.
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Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.
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Shakespeare would seem to have been a person for whom the human voice/personality in all its splendid idiosyncrasy was absolutely enthralling.
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Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.
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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.
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Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates.
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The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.
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A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.
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