'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the… — 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
I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway. — 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
Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives. We can't live… — 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
As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And… — 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
“You ordinary people who read and do not write, who 'like to read' and know nothing of the sufferings of writers, how… — 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
When I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day.… — 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
These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special to me. [I don't expect that they will have nearly the same… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his… — 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
The novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure. — 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 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
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
Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough. — 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
![“These novels [Zombie, My Sister, My Love] are so special…” quote by Joyce Carol Oates](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/20a/joyce-carol-oates-344_books_these-novels-zombie-my-sister-my-love-ar_1124964.jpg)
