"Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart."
"Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one."
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Source: Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.63, Univ. Press of Mississippi
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