Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice. Joyce Carol Oates More Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates More Quotes From Joyce Carol Oates The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming. Joyce Carol Oates done use mind Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat. Joyce Carol Oates hungry realizing loneliness Of our hurts we make monuments of survival. If we survive. Joyce Carol Oates monument survival hurt I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another. Joyce Carol Oates writing art thinking The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable. Joyce Carol Oates party suicide grieving Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed. Joyce Carol Oates creativity inspiring mean When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing. Joyce Carol Oates real stupid silly Beauty is a question of optics. All sight is illusion. Joyce Carol Oates optics illusion sight I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment. Joyce Carol Oates punishment believe art I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them. Joyce Carol Oates always-believe belief believe I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them. Joyce Carol Oates block writing thinking Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity? Joyce Carol Oates objectivity self ideas The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love. Joyce Carol Oates unrequited-love memorable life Loneliness is dangerous ... because if aloneness does not lead to God, it leads to the devil. It leads to the self. Joyce Carol Oates devil loneliness self Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write. Joyce Carol Oates wasting-time goal writing The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn't there something reassuring about it! -- that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another's eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms -- nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss? Joyce Carol Oates color eye loss I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all. Joyce Carol Oates giving-up writing art And that's the insult of it, how always it comes back to a woman being a "good" mother in the world's eyes or a "bad" mother, how everything in a woman's life is funneled through her body between her legs. Joyce Carol Oates eye mother world "Because there has been no one to stop me" has been one of the principles of my life. Joyce Carol Oates has-beens principles life I feel akin to [William] Shakespeare in the sense that, as I see it, he lived to dramatize the unfailingly exciting, unfathomably strange interplay among human beings that constitutes "scenes" in his plays, and constitutes "story" in prose fiction. Joyce Carol Oates stories play fiction
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