“In that way you recall, suddenly, sharply, in daylight, a trace of a dream of the previous night--but even as you recall… — 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 American dream is a multi-metaphor made up of distinct regions. Many regions of this country are almost like different countries. Even… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not… — 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
To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is… — 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
“I was nineteen years five months old when I fell in love for the first time. This seemed to me a profound,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“I always instruct my students to write a great deal. Write a journal. Take notes. Write when you are feeling wretched, when… — 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
