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The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

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
Greatest
Economic
Reality
Subtleties
Come
Afterward
Life
Subtlety
Realities
Physical

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It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.
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Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
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...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the primary center of consciousness just as I do. That fact alone...Well, that fact alone is staggering.
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Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.
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'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.
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That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.
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Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?
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It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
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I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired.
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How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.
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It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.
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The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming.
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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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Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.
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A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'
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It is only through disruptions and confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone else's private world with our own.
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If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in line frequently these days, while on the phone having been 'put on hold.'
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In a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of medium by which something is transmitted.
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What you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It's more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there's no sign of it, like it had never been.
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The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.
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