A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality". — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The most common misperception about me is that I write fast. I just write often. Every hour that I can. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.” — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows. — 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
It's impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James - and many more - without wanting to… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and… — 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
I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance,… — 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
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
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
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“I tell my students to write of their true subjects. How will they know when they are writing of their true subjects?… — 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
When one crosses over from an activity, or the verb, of writing or doing, and becomes a noun, like "a writer" I… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“There’s a sort of melancholy romance to the experience of being lonesome. I think of reading as a kind of romantic alone… — 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
Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day. — 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
