I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“I’ve never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but the attempted embodiment of a vision; a… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Art does the same things dreams do. We have a hunger for dreams and art fulfills that hunger. So much of real… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
One of the qualities of writing that is not much stressed is its problem-solving aspect, having to do with the presentation of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. ~ I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
A diverse and lively collection, the highest art of the interview. — 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
“It’s up to the writer and the artist to give voice to these people. There are two impulses in art: one is… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Art is fueled by rebellion: the need, in some amounting to obsessions, to resist what is, to defy one's elders, even to… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Art originates in play - in improvisation, experiment, and fantasy; it remains forever, in its deepest instincts, playful and spontaneous, an exercise… — 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
Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“A woman who has lost her husband is invalid, thus an invalid. In” — 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 Image
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 Image
I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
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 Image
At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
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 Image
The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“Did you know, Marianne: how by breaking the code that day, you broke it forever? For us all?” — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
'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 Image
