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“Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.”

Joyce Carol Oates

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More by Joyce Carol Oates

“A woman who has lost her husband is invalid, thus an invalid. In”

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Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be.

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You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

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I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.

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Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that…

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At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.

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A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him.

Joyce Carol Oates

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The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in…

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The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.

Joyce Carol Oates

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“Did you know, Marianne: how by breaking the code that day, you broke it forever? For us all?”

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'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not…

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Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst.

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Explore all 658 Joyce Carol Oates quotes

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Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.

Ian Fleming

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Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed; and it is consolatory to think, that although we can seldom…

James Boswell

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Life as we know it is fundamentally unsatisfying. I think most folks feel this to be true. They know that a life of aimless…

Michael Yates

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Give me a platter of choice finnan haddie, freshly cooked in its bath of water and milk, add melted butter, a slice or two…

Craig Claiborne

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Writing adds up to the conscience of our times.

Martin Firrell

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A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the…

Elias Canetti

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Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good…

Arthur Eddington

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I may add that we have more than once stated our willingness to conclude nonaggression pacts with the states neighboring our own!

Adolf Hitler

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The American Constitution declares 'All men are born equal.' The British Socialist Party add: 'All men must be kept equal'.

Winston Churchill

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New generations of humans inherit the acquired discoveries of generations past, allowing cosmic insight to accumulate without limit. Each discovery of science therefore adds…

Neil deGrasse Tyson