“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
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
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
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
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
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
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the… — 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
Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published… — 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
I haven't the faintest idea what my royalties are. I haven't the faintest idea how many copies of books sold, or how… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to… — 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
I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in… — 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
I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred… — 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
