Joyce Carol Oates Quotes - Page 17

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• I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Mean, Paper

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• I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Husband, Past, Problem

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• I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Teaching, Perspective, Trying

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• I haven't the faintest idea what my royalties are. I haven't the faintest idea how many copies of books sold, or how many books that I've written. I could look these things up; I have no interest in them. I don't know how much money I have. There are a lot of things I just don't care about.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Ideas, Looks

  "Video: a visit with Joyce Carol Oates" by Kristina Budelis, www.newyorker.com. June 21, 2013.

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• There are boxers possessed of such remarkable intuition, such uncanny prescience, one would think they were somehow recalling their fights, not fighting them as we watch.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Sports, Fighting, Thinking

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “On Boxing”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• In families there are frequently matters of which no one speaks, nor even alludes. There are no words for these matters. As the binding skeleton beneath the flesh is never acknowledged by us and, when at last it defines itself, is after all an obscenity.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Family, Skeletons, Flesh

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• To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Mean, Doe, Boxers

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.150, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• A diverse and lively collection, the highest art of the interview.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Interviews, Lively

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• We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Emotional, Challenges, World

  Joyce Carol Oates (1981). “Contraries”, New York : Oxford University Press

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• I compose most of my tweets with care, as if they were aphorisms - they are not usually dashed-off. Sometimes I'm surprised by the high, poetic quality of Twitter - it lends itself to a surreal sort of self-expression.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Self, Expression, Quality

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• Yet the fact had no consciousness of itself except through me.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Facts, Consciousness

  Joyce Carol Oates (1991). “Heat and other stories”, E P Dutton

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• The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day-a way of relating.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Technique, Pages

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• I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Reading, Book Reading

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.8, Zondervan

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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.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Imagination, Childhood, Want

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.94, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Grandma, Reading

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• One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Lost, Has Beens

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• 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

  Book, Eight, Months

  "Joyce Carol Oates: 'I had a dream about a woman whose make-up was dried and cracking, she made a fool of herself'". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 25, 2012.

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• Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Editors, Remember

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.67, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Party, Musical, Picnics

  Joyce Carol Oates (2007). “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982”, Ecco

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• The joyous fulfillment of your sex : the sacred duties of beloved wife, and helpmeet, and mother. In opposition to the vulgar and mercantile hurly-burly of the great world, the idyllic pleasures of the domestic hearth-the which, I firmly believe, make of one small room an everywhere, indeed; and provide us with that small measure of bliss, which is, if we are greatly fortunate, and deserving, Our Lord's promise to us, of the Heaven to come.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Mother, Sex, Women

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• At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Country, Art, Half

  Joyce Carol Oates' address to graduating class at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, May 28, 2006.

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• I've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel 'Black Water,' I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Children, Writing, Voice

  CNN's Book Chat, www.cnn.com.

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• 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

  Secret, Done, Emotion

  Joyce Carol Oates (2007). “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982”, Ecco

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• If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Independent, Numbers

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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

  Religious, America, People

  Source: www.achievement.org

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