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Joyce Carol Oates Quotes


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Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Showing 121-130 of 136 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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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

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People might be surprised to know how much I throw away. For every page I publish, I throw 10 pages away.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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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.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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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

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My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like groping along in the dark. I like writing and find it challenging, but I don't find it easy.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

~Joyce Carol Oates

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Novelist

Born: June 16th, 1938

Links

Find Joyce Carol Oates on Amazon

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