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Writing is the most solitary of arts.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
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Lockport
New York
Arts
Art
Writing
Solitary
More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.
Joyce Carol Oates
'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.
Joyce Carol Oates
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
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
Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.
Joyce Carol Oates
Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.
Joyce Carol Oates
There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.
Joyce Carol Oates
I turn down invitations to do things for money. I have almost no interest in making money. Actually, I've acquired a fair amount of money that I will never live to spend. So earning money, in a way, depresses me, because I feel it's just piling up.
Joyce Carol Oates
I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.
Joyce Carol Oates
Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.
Joyce Carol Oates
The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day-a way of relating.
Joyce Carol Oates
She examined me, she looked at me critically and said, Why are you trying to starve yourself? To keep myself from feeling love, from feeling lust, from feeling anything at all.
Joyce Carol Oates
For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.
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
I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.
Joyce Carol Oates
The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.
Joyce Carol Oates
The quiet people just do their work.
Joyce Carol Oates
I learned you don't discover the evidence of any cause in its result.
Joyce Carol Oates
It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.
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
