'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Though I am never exactly "blocked" I do have difficult periods. I am led by a fascination with material - the challenge… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Characters begin as voices, then gain presence by being viewed in others' eyes. Characters define one another in dramatic contexts. It is… — 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
If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Vividly imagined, beautifully written, at times almost unbearably suspenseful-the stories in Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut collection, This Is Paradise, are boldly inventive in… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
In a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own… — 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
It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls; for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I feel akin to [William] Shakespeare in the sense that, as I see it, he lived to dramatize the unfailingly exciting, unfathomably… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer.… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time. — 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
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