Why the need, rising in some very nearly to the level of compulsion, to verify experience by way of language?-to scrupulously record… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Look at the world and see what's there. It's very beautiful. It's a very exciting but in some ways treacherous world, and… — 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
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
How fascinating to a child are words: the shapes, sounds, textures and mysterious meanings of words; the way words link together into… — 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
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
I see the world in ways that might be considered somewhat harsh and Darwinistic. At the same time mediated, as in Darwin,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Though I am never exactly "blocked" I do have difficult periods. I am led by a fascination with material - the challenge… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the… — 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
One of the qualities of writing that is not much stressed is its problem-solving aspect, having to do with the presentation of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The other book that I worry no one reads anymore is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not easy, but every page is wonderful… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly… — 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
I turn down invitations to do things for money. I have almost no interest in making money. Actually, I've acquired a fair… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
'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
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
