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I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

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
Probably
Written
Time
Revising
Spend

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.
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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 you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.
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Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible to me voice, unexpectedly.
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If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.
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At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.
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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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I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.
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Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.
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Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.
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To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.
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Tragedy is the highest form of art.
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After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
Joyce Carol Oates
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The despairing soul is a rebel.
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It's impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James - and many more - without wanting to write, however entirely different one's writing will be.
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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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There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.
Joyce Carol Oates
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It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.
Joyce Carol Oates
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I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.
Joyce Carol Oates