I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul. Joyce Carol Oates More Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates More Quotes From Joyce Carol Oates Anyone who teaches knows that you don't really experience a text until you've taught it, in loving detail, with an intelligent and responsive class. Joyce Carol Oates details intelligent class Like most people, I can be very easily hurt. Joyce Carol Oates i-can hurt people Art is a means of memorialization of the past, a record of a rapidly vanishing world; a means of exorcising, at least temporarily, the ravages of homesickness. To speak of 'what is past, or passing or to come'-in the most meticulous language thereby to assure its permanence; to honor those we've loved and learned from and must outlive. Joyce Carol Oates mean past art A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside there dwells a frail, hopeful butterfly of a spirit. Joyce Carol Oates rhinos butterfly book You cultivate the subconscious by meditation, by sitting in silence and by not trying to control your thoughts. Then go someplace where you haven't been before, or go for a walk, a run, and look for signs of grace-an epiphany, something that comes to you. Joyce Carol Oates silence meditation running Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child. Joyce Carol Oates our-family lasts children I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work. Joyce Carol Oates honor-and-respect art thinking A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time. Joyce Carol Oates erase past The great happiness in life in creativity belongs to amateurs. Joyce Carol Oates great-happiness life-happiness creativity What is memory but the repository of things doomed to be forgotten, so you must have History. You must have labor to invent History. Being faithful to all that happens to you of significance, recording days, dates, events, names, sights not relying merely upon memory which fades like a Polaroid print where you see the memory fading before your eyes like time itself retreating. Joyce Carol Oates eye sight memories 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 women mother sex Budapest in late May is a city of lilacs. The sweet, languid, rather sleepy smell of lilacs wafts everywhere. And it is a city of lovers, many of them quite middle-aged. Walking with their arms around each other, embracing and kissing on park benches. A sensuousness very much bound up (it seems to me) with the heady ubiquitous smell of lilacs. Joyce Carol Oates kissing cities sweet To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up. Joyce Carol Oates boxers doe mean 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 half country art There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so. Joyce Carol Oates generations expectations opportunity When poets - write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful preparation of meals, the serving of meals, meals communally shared: a sense of the sacred in the profane. Joyce Carol Oates thoughtful preparation writing Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough. Joyce Carol Oates writing numbers ideas A diverse and lively collection, the highest art of the interview. Joyce Carol Oates lively interviews art Vividly imagined, beautifully written, at times almost unbearably suspenseful-the stories in Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut collection, This Is Paradise, are boldly inventive in their exploration of the tenuous nature of human relations. These are poignant stories of 'paradise'-Hawai'i-with all that 'paradise' entails of the transience of sensuous beauty. Joyce Carol Oates paradise exploration stories Is there any mystery like who you finally turn out to be. Joyce Carol Oates turns maturity mystery
