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 Copy Share Image
It's hard to say how we compare to other people. We each inhabit our own personalities. I have often felt that I'm… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My students often say, 'My roommate read this story and really liked it,' and it's hard to convince them that there are… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I come from people who did not go to college. They didn't even finish high school. People who one might call ordinary… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it… — 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
