Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.” — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general:… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The most common misperception about me is that I write fast. I just write often. Every hour that I can. — 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
Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an… — 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
I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I haven't any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I… — 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
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James - and many more - without wanting to… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“And we can read - there is always the prospect of escape, through books." "Books are not a means of 'escape', Meta!… — 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
