Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
the art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“There’s a sort of melancholy romance to the experience of being lonesome. I think of reading as a kind of romantic alone… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
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… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The other book that I worry no one reads anymore is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not easy, but every page is wonderful… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
“Did you know, Marianne: how by breaking the code that day, you broke it forever? For us all?” — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
