A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“You ordinary people who read and do not write, who 'like to read' and know nothing of the sufferings of writers, how… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul. — 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
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
I haven't any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
the art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“As a librarian for 18 years at the Merck branch of the Trenton Public Library, I was sorely tested by the slow-witted… — 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
In a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly… — 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
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
Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth… — 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
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
Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing… — 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
To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
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
“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing… — 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
