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
As soon as I moved to Princeton in 1978, I became fascinated by local history, much of it Revolutionary War-era; and I… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“I’m not bitter for they are telling me I am HISTORY You wouldn’t be bitter if you are HISTORY any of you… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjects. Lighthearted material doesn't appeal to me, and… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious-why are we born? why when and as we are?-so too are the beginnings of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“The hard part of humanity is history. All that's been done to human beings by other human beings. In the Rocky River… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I've always been so interested in personal history. I'm very fascinated by my parents' and my grandparents' generations. I seem to think… — 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
