'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Henry David Thoreau is very independent-minded, very iconoclastic, and had quite a corrosive sense of humor. I think that I probably have… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's 'Requiem Mass.' You know, it's very… — 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
Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the… — 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
