Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general:… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Before I undertake a lengthy project, I have usually given much thought to it over a period of years. My files are… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
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 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
