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America is a very religious nation. Not a mono-religious nation because there are many different strands of belief, but there's something about this nation that inspires people, or perhaps draws people, who are strongly idealistic.
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
The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct
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What you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It's more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there's no sign of it, like it had never been.
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Boxing has become America's tragic theater.
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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
I love insult, it's always honest.
Joyce Carol Oates
Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.
Joyce Carol Oates
Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.
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Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.
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Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible to me voice, unexpectedly.
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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.
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Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.
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Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.
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If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.
Joyce Carol Oates
Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.
Joyce Carol Oates
Perhaps the inevitable tragedy of our complex civilization is that we must be specialists in our fields - and our fields have become increasingly difficult, so that communication is nearly impossible.
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God's blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.
Joyce Carol Oates
Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.
Joyce Carol Oates
A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him.
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All actors are whores. They want only one thing: to seduce you.
Joyce Carol Oates
A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.
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