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Language is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?If it were not for language, could we lie?

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
Trusted
Instrument
Instruments
Cases
Lying
Language

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.
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The quiet people just do their work.
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I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.
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The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.
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The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.
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My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
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I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.
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Betrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.
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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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I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to tell the story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species.
Joyce Carol Oates
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And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.
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She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.
Joyce Carol Oates
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A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.
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Boxing is rough. Even if you win, you get hurt.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Why is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind?
Joyce Carol Oates
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'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
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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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My students often say, My roommate read this story and really liked it, and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something.
Joyce Carol Oates
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. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
Joyce Carol Oates
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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