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Writing Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
- 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…
- Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.
- The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.
- 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…
- 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…
- Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.
- Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.
- On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.
- Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.
- You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.
- It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with…
- As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really…
- Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom.
- I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate…
- How fascinating to a child are words: the shapes, sounds, textures and mysterious meanings of words; the way words link together into elastic patterns called…
- It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation…
- If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking…
- Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.
- You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.
- As a child. I grew up on a small farm, so I did a lot of drawings of animals, chickens and people. At the bottom…
- All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.
- I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.
- If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
- If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.
- It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
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More Writing Quotes
- Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. — Hannah Arendt
- Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing. — Paul Auster
- I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was… — Paul Auster
- I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then… — Paul Auster
- When we were making the law, when we were writing the literature and the mathematics the grandfarthers of Blair and little Bush… — Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
- A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit. — Richard Bach
- In every song I write, whether it's a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing… — Billie Joe Armstrong
- I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. — Andrea Arnold
- Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. — Sholem Asch
- Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core… — Isaac Asimov
- If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. — Isaac Asimov
- Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not. — Isaac Asimov