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 am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so… — 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
If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“It’s up to the writer and the artist to give voice to these people. There are two impulses in art: one is… — 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
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
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
Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world… — 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 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
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
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
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
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
Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared… — 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
“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
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 rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in… — 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
“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
