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"I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency."
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Exlpore more Creativity quotes
"Musicians do not get on stage without hearing the song singing inside of them. Poets do not write as if they are jotting down a sermon, they see everything in their subconscious before presenting it to the conscious, which they later turn to readable materials. Artist do not draw and paint without painting in dream states, trance, or see an art form that others do not see. Being creative does not calls for being any supernatural entity, but in creating with the entities inside of you."
"I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow."
"Unfortunately, bureaucratic problems at the federal level are causing many other small Washington companies to be denied federal funding that would help transfer their ideas from their laboratories into our homes and hospitals."
"But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good."
"My home is attached to a study - in fact, my home is my study, and I have a little room to sleep in. I need to write looking onto the street or a landscape. Looking at reality from some distance gives me romantic visions."
"Actually ideas are everywhere. It's the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor."
"Now is not the time for bigots and racists. No time for sexists and homophobes. Now, more than ever, is the time for ARTISTS. It's time for us to rise above and to create. To show humanity. To spread hope. We must prevent society from destroying itself, from losing its way. Now is the time for love."
"Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context."
"You know you're writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket."
Explore more quotes by Joyce Carol Oates
"We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves unable to see that here now this very moment is sacred but once it's gone-its value is incontestable."
"A three-quarter moon, glowering bone, with a hint of something bruised, battered, scarred. The moon has endured more than anybody can know."
"I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it."
"Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding."
"Like a turnip such a head could be blown away very easily. For where a man was weak, a woman has unmanned him. It would be a mercy to blow such a man away."
"Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls; for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is the most haunting of her life, though it is one-sided and ends in tragedy."
"A wet autumn morning, a garbage truck clattering down the street. The first snowfall of the season, blossom sized flakes falling languidly and melting on teh ground, a premature snow fall delicate as lace, rapidly melting."
"The demon blood inside me burned my soul to ashes long ago.I am a monster who once dreamed he was a man. Never mistakeme again."
"Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing."
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