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I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

Joyce Carol Oates

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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
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Lockport
New York
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More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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Nothing comes of so many things, if you have patience.
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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I compose most of my tweets with care, as if they were aphorisms - they are not usually dashed-off. Sometimes I'm surprised by the high, poetic quality of Twitter - it lends itself to a surreal sort of self-expression.
Joyce Carol Oates
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It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Great art is cathartic it is always moral.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?
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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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.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.
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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The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of form to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.
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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To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them.
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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Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.
Joyce Carol Oates
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At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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
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I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct
Joyce Carol Oates