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Joyce Carol Oates: We Humans Forget That Symbols Are Our Creation

Words of wisdom from the American author (and prolific tweeter): “Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.”
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Words of wisdom from the American author (and notorious tweeter):

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

Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938) is a prolific American author who has since her first publishing in 1963 written over 40 novels in addition to many volumes of poetry and short fiction. She has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize five times but never won, which makes her sort of like the Leonardo DiCaprio of excellent American fiction. Maybe Leo is just the Joyce Carol Oates of acting. It’s debatable.

Oates’ works include them, Black Water, and Blonde. She is well-known for her exceptional productivity, writing 7-8 hours per day in longhand. Oates has taught at Princeton since 1978.

More more insight on symbols, here’s a video featuring Big Think expert Sam Gosling:

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Joyce Carol Oates on the Intimate Joy of Reading
“The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we’re reading, we’re thinking. It’s a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we’re looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there’s not as much reflective time. And it’s the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.”  
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