Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world… — 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
Shakespeare would seem to have been a person for whom the human voice/personality in all its splendid idiosyncrasy was absolutely enthralling. — 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
I don't know whether I am different from other people. Perhaps I am. Perhaps no one has a personality, and people are… — 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
“What you call your personality, you know?—it’s not the actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It’s more like a flame. A flame… — 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
“I feel very transparent in myself. I’m more of an observer. I’m interested in what’s going on. I’m not sure that I… — 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
