“Civilization is faces, "appearances": when these collapse, civilization collapses as well.” — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I wrote a novel called 'Blonde,' which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography.… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's rare that we actively and consciously 'forget'; most of the time we have simply forgotten, with no consciousness of having forgotten.… — 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 finite… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Often in gothic novels there's a large house, an estate, and it's symbolic of that culture. Usually it's sort of moldering or… — 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
