I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“He had no idea of my misery. It would have surprised him to think that I was a human creature with a… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth… — 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
After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer.… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“It had seemed to me an elegant nightmare concoction made by adults for adults, to further the aims and fantasies of adults,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It would be difficult for a writer of realism to avoid suggesting a political/moral perspective in his or her fiction. "Politics" per… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I feel akin to [William] Shakespeare in the sense that, as I see it, he lived to dramatize the unfailingly exciting, unfathomably… — 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