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I'm very American in the sense of being an explorer. America is filled with people who are interested in exploring landscapes, either external or internal. A westward nation of explorers.

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
Sense
External
America
Landscape
Westward
People
Filled
Explorer
Interested
Landscapes
Nation
Explorers
Either
Internals
Nations
Exploring
American
Internal

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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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.
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She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.
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As a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my 'farm chores' - but I had time also to be alone, to explore the fields, woods and creek side. And to read.
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All actors are whores. They want only one thing: to seduce you.
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Art is the highest expression of the human spirit.
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The quiet people just do their work.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.
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The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.
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Childhood is the province of the imagination and when I immerse myself in it, I re-create it as it was, as it could have been, as I wanted - and didn't want - it to be.
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There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.
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Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.
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Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child.
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After love a formal feeling comes.
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That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.
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Every scar in my face is worth it.
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Dear girl! Life is addictive. Yet we must live.
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A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.
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Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.
Joyce Carol Oates
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You can't deny Eros. Eros wills trike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. And the god of Eros will flow through you, as Lawrence says, in the 'perfect obliteration of blood consciousness.
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I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.
Joyce Carol Oates