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
“Erotic: meaning you're "desired." For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness. So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.” — 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
As a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my 'farm chores' - but I had time also to… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
I've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson did have a stroke as… — 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
'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
“I was nineteen years five months old when I fell in love for the first time. This seemed to me a profound,… — Joyce Carol Oates Copy Share Image
My parents inspired me by their example. They both grew up in the Depression, and both of them had to quit school… — 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
“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
