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
You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing. — 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
Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I feel akin to [William] Shakespeare in the sense that, as I see it, he lived to dramatize the unfailingly exciting, unfathomably… — 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
When I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day.… — 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
I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
When poets write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful preparation of meals, the serving… — 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 believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. ~ I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely… — 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
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
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
Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring. — 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
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
Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork. — 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
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
Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost. — 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
On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure. — 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 was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway. — 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
If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise. — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And… — 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
I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer.… — 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
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 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
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
![“I feel akin to [William] Shakespeare in the sense that, as I see it, he lived to dramatize the unfailingly exciting, unfathomably strange interplay among human beings that constitutes "scenes" in his plays, and constitutes "story" in prose fiction.” quote by Joyce Carol Oates](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c4d/joyce-carol-oates-344_exciting_i-feel-akin-to-william-shakespeare-in-th_2191592.jpg)
