"In love there are two things - bodies and words."
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Quote collection
Joyce Carol Oates quotes (page 3 of 23)
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"Of our hurts we make monuments of survival. If we survive."
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"I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love."
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"Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions."
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"The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct"
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"Art is fueled by rebellion: the need, in some amounting to obsessions, to resist what is, to defy one's elders, even to the point of ostracism; to define oneself, and by extension one's generation, as new, novel, ungovernable."
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"Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed."
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"Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors. Everyone knows this."
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""Because there has been no one to stop me" has been one of the principles of my life."
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"I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband."
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"My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school when they were quite young to work, because there actually was no choice. So they've always impressed me with their resilience, their good spirits, their courage. I just remember them carrying on and just doing their lives. They really made a strong impression on me."
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"The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency."
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"The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love."
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"All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later."
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"I believe that the creative impulse is natural in all human beings, and that it is particularly powerful in children unless it is suppressed. Consequently, one is behaving normally and instinctively and healthily when one is creating - literature, art, music, or whatever. An excellent cook is also creative! I am disturbed that a natural human inclination [creative work] should, by some Freudian turn of phrase, be considered compulsive - perhaps even pathological. To me this is a complete misreading of the human enterprise. One should also enjoy one's work, and look forward to it daily."
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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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"Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity."
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"The third man in the ring makes boxing possible."
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"Boxing has become America's tragic theater."
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"Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat."
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