I did not consider that I would lead a literary life. I'd thought initially, as a young girl, that I would be… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I tend to think in dramatic terms. In life, there may be an actual drama, but it would be the fictionalized, imagined… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I've never given up. I've always kept going. I don't feel that I could afford to give up. That would be the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It would be difficult for a writer of realism to avoid suggesting a political/moral perspective in his or her fiction. "Politics" per… — 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
