Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.
Interpretation
Writing can be a difficult and tormenting process, often leading to a sense of despair.
This quote by Joyce Carol Oates highlights the intense struggles and emotional turmoil that writers face in their craft. The phrase suggests that the challenges of writing can be so overwhelming that the only motivation strong enough to sustain a writer is the existential weight of their own thoughts, implying that the act of writing may sometimes feel like a desperate plea for meaning or escape from suffering.
In practice
In a writing workshop when discussing the emotional challenges of the craft.
Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.
I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.
I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list.
The best graphics are about the useful and important, about life and death, about the universe. Beautiful graphics do not traffic with the trivial.
Surrealism comes from the reality of Latin America.
The goal of an artist is to create the definitive work that cannot be surpassed.
Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
The critic does his utmost to blight genius in its infancy; that which rises in spite of him he will not see; and then he complains of the decline of literature.
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