I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The other book that I worry no one reads anymore is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not easy, but every page is wonderful… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“Erotic: meaning you're "desired." For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness. So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.” — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I think what distresses me most in my life is that I have so many ideas I consider exciting ideas that I… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Long ago I'd said that I am "fascinated by the phantasmagoria of human personality" - this is perhaps even truer now than… — 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
