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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.
Joyce Carol Oates
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The desire to be a writer often emerges from a lifelong practice of writing rather than a formal decision.

Joyce Carol Oates reflects on her journey as a writer, highlighting how her passion for writing developed naturally from an early age. She suggests that while she may not have explicitly sought to become a writer, her consistent engagement with the craft laid the groundwork for her eventual recognition of it as a significant aspiration in her twenties.

Themes

WritingPassionLiteratureJourneySelf-Discovery

In practice

Example use cases

In a writing workshop, as a prompt to discuss the importance of childhood influences on our current work.

More from Joyce Carol Oates

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.
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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.
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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.
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The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
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. . . 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.
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When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.
Joyce Carol OatesRead

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