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
You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of connecting with the present audience over trying to achieve timelessness in writing.
Joyce Carol Oates highlights that writers should focus on their current audience rather than worrying excessively about how their work will be perceived in the future. The notion is that if writers engage sincerely with their contemporaries, their work may indeed stand the test of time and resonate with future generations.
Themes
WritingContemporariesPosterityAudienceArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote would be fitting to use during a workshop on writing, emphasizing the importance of engaging with current trends and audiences.
More from Joyce Carol Oates
All quotes βI 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.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
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.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
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.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
. . . 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.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
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Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
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You should make something. You should bring something into the world that wasn't in the world before. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's a table or a film or gardening-everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, 'I did that.'
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Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.
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It's really, always, the story and the characters that come first, and the other things are kind of dealt with in time or, in fact, driven by the story.
Pete DocterRead