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Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

— Joyce Carol Oates

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Writing

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

Address at Mount Holyoke College (2006)

When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

Prose — it might be speculated — is discourse; poetry ellipsis.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”

Suman Pokhrel

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.

William Wordsworth Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Joyce Carol Oates (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.