At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say. — 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
“And we can read - there is always the prospect of escape, through books." "Books are not a means of 'escape', Meta!… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
'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
There is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family life and the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“Much of the time he lay part-dressed on his bed, sipping gin, and thinking, and thinking, - though what it was, of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
She thought that this man was her savior, that he had come to her at a time in her life when her… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives. We can't live… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“Oh, it’s a terrible, cruel thing—first you’re young, and that takes up such a long time you think it’s forever, then suddenly… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“She was one who wished to believe the human motives precede actions for she was (she had always been) a rational individual… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day.… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Each time I undertake to reread Virginia Woolf, I am somewhat baffled by the signature breathlessness and relentlessly "poetic" tone, the shimmering… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Near the point of impact, time acelerates to the speed of light. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the… — 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
My own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of… — 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
The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what… — 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
