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
This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the… — 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
Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
To claim - to claim repeatedly - that you are innocent of what it is claimed by others that you have done,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Adriana loved even the rank animal smell of the man's body, her sweat-slicked breasts and belly flattened beneath him, and her arms… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I see the world in ways that might be considered somewhat harsh and Darwinistic. At the same time mediated, as in Darwin,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
People might be surprised to know how much I throw away. For every page I publish, I throw 10 pages away. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writing allows for fictitious voices - the voices of persons unlike myself - that might otherwise be muted. — 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
The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson did have a stroke as… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
What does it mean to be born? After we die, will it be the same thing as it was before we were… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The act of sending a letter is an act of generosity, even if, in retrospect, it might seem reckless. Why regret one's… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out deserving individuals and bringing their work… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else. — 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
