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
Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general:… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The mysteries of the female sex! We men can never hope to fathom your depths, but only try not to drown in… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
People have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my… — 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
She examined me, she looked at me critically and said, "Why are you trying to starve yourself?" To keep myself from feeling… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
You cultivate the subconscious by meditation, by sitting in silence and by not trying to control your thoughts. Then go someplace where… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else. — 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
