Books Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality".

— Joyce Carol Oates

Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.

— Joyce Carol Oates

I am always reading or thinking about reading.

— Joyce Carol Oates

I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.

— Joyce Carol Oates

“Starting a novel is like standing in a field and waiting for lightning to strike.”

— Joyce Carol Oates

“... the hopeful young author had no doubt that books might change the world.”

— Joyce Carol Oates

The novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.

— Joyce Carol Oates

“Hating "The Great Gatsby" (the novel) is like spitting into the Grand Canyon. It will not be going away anytime soon, but…

— Joyce Carol Oates

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

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

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

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

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in…

— Joyce Carol Oates

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

I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the…

— Joyce Carol Oates

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

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't…

— Joyce Carol Oates

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

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

'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the…

— Joyce Carol Oates

Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out deserving individuals and bringing their work…

— Joyce Carol Oates

When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I…

— Joyce Carol Oates

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

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

To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved.…

— Joyce Carol Oates

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

— Joyce Carol Oates

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

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

“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

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

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

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

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

— Joyce Carol Oates

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

It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

— Joyce Carol Oates

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

— Joyce Carol Oates