“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
Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the… — 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
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
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
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
The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Art is a means of memorialization of the past, a record of a rapidly vanishing world; a means of exorcising, at least… — 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
Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as… — 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
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