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Great art is cathartic it is always moral.

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
Great
Always
Cathartic
Moral
Art

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?
Joyce Carol Oates
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Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors. Everyone knows this.
Joyce Carol Oates
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For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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.
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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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
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Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Every scar in my face is worth it.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Like all virtuous people he imagines he must speak the truth.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.
Joyce Carol Oates
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That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.
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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The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.
Joyce Carol Oates
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In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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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'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.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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.
Joyce Carol Oates