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Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
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More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
Near the point of impact, time acelerates to the speed of light.
Joyce Carol Oates
I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.
Joyce Carol Oates
The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.
Joyce Carol Oates
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
Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.
Joyce Carol Oates
When a marriage ends, who is left to understand it?
Joyce Carol Oates
A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.
Joyce Carol Oates
One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.
Joyce Carol Oates
The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.
Joyce Carol Oates
Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as a comment on race relations in America more generally: we are 'roommates' with one another, but how well do we know one another?
Joyce Carol Oates
These are the moments for which we live.
Joyce Carol Oates
Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child.
Joyce Carol Oates
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
God's blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.
Joyce Carol Oates
Tragedy is the highest form of art.
Joyce Carol Oates
The American dream is a multi-metaphor made up of distinct regions. Many regions of this country are almost like different countries. Even in one state, northern and southern California are like two separate countries.
Joyce Carol Oates
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.
Joyce Carol Oates
Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.
Joyce Carol Oates
Boxing is an American sport - a 'so-called sport' to many - in which images of incalculable beauty and violence, desperation and ingenuity, are routinely entwined the sport that evokes the most extreme reactions - loathing, revulsion, righteous indigation a fierce and often inexplicable loyalty.
Joyce Carol Oates