For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.

Joyce Carol Oates
About This Quote

The serial killer is the ultimate nightmare for all normal humans. The thought of a person who kills multiple people, randomly and without remorse is enough to give people nightmares. Yet, if you look at it from a writer's perspective, there's something more than just the fear of these monsters. For the writer, the serial killer is an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.

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More Quotes By Joyce Carol Oates
  1. The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.
  2. In love there are two things - bodies and words.
  3. A daydreamer is prepared for most things.
  4. If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.
  5. And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.
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