"When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult,……" — Joyce Carol Oates
"When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing."
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Joyce Carol Oates
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312 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates has 312 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves…
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The institution of marriage is just formalizing an emotion, an attempt to make it seem permanent. The emotion will last…
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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.…
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The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.
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Alone, she took hot baths and sat exhausted in the steaming water, wondering at her perpetual exhaustion. All that winter…
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Blood transforms the warm bath water and, in it, I see weakly that this was a mistake. The razor's cut…
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The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought.
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The mere passage of time makes us all exiles.
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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…
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Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death…
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Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.
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We are the species that clamors to be lied to.
See all 312 quotes by Joyce Carol Oates »
More Ah Quotes
This quote is filed under Ah Quotes,
one of 939 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
— Russell Baker
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Ah, bless you, Sister, may all your sons be bishops.
— Brendan Behan
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That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there…
— Annie Besant
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I think that, ah, I'm a very goofy sort of person in many ways.
— Jeff Bezos
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Ah, lives of men! When prosperous they glitter - Like a fair picture; when misfortune comes - A wet sponge…
— Aeschylus
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Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
— Robert Browning
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The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But…
— Smedley Butler
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Ah, how many luxuries has the good God prepared for his Jewish children.
— Sholom Aleichem
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Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
— Albert Camus
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Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.
— Lewis Carroll
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I just want people to remember me like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene…
— Jackie Chan
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Ah, reality TV: where opportunists delight in exposing opportunism! It's kind of like the indie music scene.
— Diablo Cody
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