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I don't believe in predestination - except for genetic predilections.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Novelist
Playwright
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Lockport
New York
Genetic
Except
Believe
Predilections
Predestination
More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.
Joyce Carol Oates
A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'
Joyce Carol Oates
He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life.
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
When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer.
Joyce Carol Oates
Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.
Joyce Carol Oates
Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious-why are we born? why when and as we are?-so too are the beginnings of works of art and of artists.
Joyce Carol Oates
The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to overcome doubt.
Joyce Carol Oates
... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.
Joyce Carol Oates
The quiet people just do their work.
Joyce Carol Oates
It's hard to say how we compare to other people. We each inhabit our own personalities. I have often felt that I'm a very neutral being and that I have almost no personality. I'm drawn to writing partly because I'm fascinated by the mimetic process.
Joyce Carol Oates
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
By the way of connecting with subject, with theme, I was able to find a kind of lifeline. Writing's like a lifeline. You have to get the right way in. Otherwise the material just lies there, and you can't do anything with it.
Joyce Carol Oates
Much in our lives is chance.
Joyce Carol Oates
Whoever was stupid was beneath worry or thought you did not have to figure them out. This eliminated hundreds of people. In this life you had time only for a certain amount of thinking, and there was no need to waste any of it on people who were not threatening.
Joyce Carol Oates
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson did have a stroke as a relatively young man of 39 and seemed always to be ill. He was 'high-strung' - intensely neurotic - yet a charismatic personality nonetheless.
Joyce Carol Oates
Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.
Joyce Carol Oates
I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired.
Joyce Carol Oates
And I’m drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I’m sympathetic with it, I think, because I feel I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.
Joyce Carol Oates
