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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.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
Author
Autobiographer
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Essayist
Novelist
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Lockport
New York
Sits
Cat
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Write
Writing
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More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
The American dream is a multi-metaphor made up of distinct regions. Many regions of this country are almost like different countries. Even in one state, northern and southern California are like two separate countries.
Joyce Carol Oates
I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like groping along in the dark. I like writing and find it challenging, but I don't find it easy.
Joyce Carol Oates
Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.
Joyce Carol Oates
The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to overcome doubt.
Joyce Carol Oates
It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.
Joyce Carol Oates
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that.
Joyce Carol Oates
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.
Joyce Carol Oates
Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.
Joyce Carol Oates
I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.
Joyce Carol Oates
Yet I will make you all love me and I will punish myself to spite your love.
Joyce Carol Oates
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.
Joyce Carol Oates
For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.
Joyce Carol Oates
Why is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind?
Joyce Carol Oates
Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.
Joyce Carol Oates
Writing is the most solitary of arts.
Joyce Carol Oates
These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.] They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not.
Joyce Carol Oates
