Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject. — 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
Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse. — 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
I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come.… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Before I undertake a lengthy project, I have usually given much thought to it over a period of years. My files are… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
By the way of connecting with subject, with theme, I was able to find a kind of lifeline. Writing's like a lifeline.… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living--we who have survived--understand that our guilt… — 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
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
I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
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
At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
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
The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
“Did you know, Marianne: how by breaking the code that day, you broke it forever? For us all?” — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
'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
And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share
