Joyce Carol Oates Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Joyce Carol Oates.
Famous Quotes By Joyce Carol Oates
I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency. — Joyce Carol Oates
I was nineteen years five months old when I fell in love for the first time. This seemed to me a profound, advanced age; never can we anticipate being older than we are, or wiser; if we're exhausted, it's impossible to anticipate being strong; as, in the grip of a dream, we rarely understand that we're dreaming, and will escape by the simplest of methods, opening our eyes. — Joyce Carol Oates
For the wanting to be good,in defiance of justice, is one of mankind's greatest weaknesses. — Joyce Carol Oates
You could be thoroughly an intellectual while not surrendering maleness; you could not be so totally intellectual and not surrender some degree of femaleness. — Joyce Carol Oates
My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes. — Joyce Carol Oates
I've never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but the attempted embodiment of a vision; a complex of emotions; raw experience. The effort of memorable art is to evoke in the reader or spectator emotions appropriate to that effort. — Joyce Carol Oates
I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband. — Joyce Carol Oates
Art is a means of memorialization of the past, a record of a rapidly vanishing world; a means of exorcising, at least temporarily, the ravages of homesickness. To speak of 'what is past, or passing or to come'-in the most meticulous language thereby to assure its permanence; to honor those we've loved and learned from and must outlive. — Joyce Carol Oates
In this way unwittingly the Widow-to-Be is assuring her husband's death - his doom. Even as she believes she is behaving intelligently - "shrewdly" and "reasonably" - she is taking him to a teeming petri dish of lethal bacteria where within a week he will succumb to a virulent staph infection - a "hospital" infection acquired in the course of his treatment for pneumonia. Even as she is fantasizing that he will be home for dinner she is assuring that he will never return home. How unwitting, all Widows-to-Be who imagine that they are doing the right thing, in innocence and ignorance! — Joyce Carol Oates
Adriana loved even the rank animal smell of the man's body, her sweat-slicked breasts and belly flattened beneath him, and her arms and legs clutching him as a drowning woman might clutch another person to save her life. Don't don't don't don't leave me. DON'T LEAVE ME. As in animal copulation the frenzy is to be locked together not out of sentiment or choice but physical compulsion. As if bolts of electric current ran through both their bodies and would only release them from each other when it ceased. — Joyce Carol Oates
Since thirteen, she'd been preparing. She wasn't beautiful like these Bayhead Harbor girls, but it was surprising how men sometimes looked at her. More it was older men rather than guys her age, for some reason. [ ... ] There were guys - older guys - she'd yearned for so frankly you could see it in her face. — Joyce Carol Oates
And what is 'art'? - a firestorm rushing through Time, arising from no visible source and conforming to no principles of logic or causality. — Joyce Carol Oates
I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to tell the story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species. — Joyce Carol Oates
Especially she dreaded the isolation of the swimmer, amid propelled and splashing figures yet she was isolated, always one isolated in the water where thoughts await like froth on the surface of the water that smelled like chemicals. — Joyce Carol Oates
And the thought consoled me, as it does now: everything you believe you have imagined is real. You have only to outlive it. — Joyce Carol Oates
I would know of myself through the witnessing and naming of others. As Jesus in the Gospels is only seen and spoken of and recorded by others. I would know my existence and the value of that existence through others' eyes, which I believed I could trust as I could not trust my own. — Joyce Carol Oates
It is very hard to prevail where you are not, in the deepest and most intimate and forgiving of ways, loved. It is very hard to prevail in any case but without this love, it is close to impossible. — Joyce Carol Oates
In that way you recall, suddenly, sharply, in daylight, a trace of a dream of the previous night
but even as you recall it, it begins to fade. — Joyce Carol Oates
If marriage is a masquerade, there is the very real danger that masks may slip. The — Joyce Carol Oates
Always, it was claimed of her, she was strong and she was capable. You are not loved for being strong and capable if you are a female but if you are a female and you are strong and capable you will make your way without love. — Joyce Carol Oates
Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice. — Joyce Carol Oates
Her long periods of intense concentration began to be punctuated by bouts of directionless daydreaming, sudden explosions of feeling. At such times Shakespeare was too dangerous to be read closely - Hamlet whispered truths too cruel to be borne, every word in Lear hooked in flesh and could not be dislodged. As for Wilde, Hobbes, Schopenhauer . . . even cynicism, Marya saw, can't save you. — Joyce Carol Oates
After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother. — Joyce Carol Oates
Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: 'Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors.' Everyone knows this. — Joyce Carol Oates
It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last. — Joyce Carol Oates
Henry James's later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indulgence, dictating to a secretary. The roaming garrulousness of ordinary speech is usually corrected when it's transcribed into written prose. — Joyce Carol Oates
The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives. — Joyce Carol Oates
Dear girl! Life is addictive. Yet we must live. — Joyce Carol Oates
For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted. — Joyce Carol Oates
The best part of being a nanny, Katya thought, was reading children's books aloud to enraptured children like Tricia, for no one had read such books aloud to her when she'd been a little girl. There hadn't been such books in the Spivak household on County Line Road, nor would there have been any time for such interludes. — Joyce Carol Oates
Gossip - invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate the truth. — Joyce Carol Oates
I never change, I simply become more myself. — Joyce Carol Oates
I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others. — Joyce Carol Oates
Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance. — Joyce Carol Oates
The appeal of writing is primarily the investigation of mystery. — Joyce Carol Oates
One of life's minor satisfactions is forgetting. — Joyce Carol Oates
When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer. — Joyce Carol Oates
Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening, and not reading, quite fascinating. — Joyce Carol Oates
Everything is entirely in Nature, and Nature is entire in everything. She has her center in every brute. - SCHOPENHAUER The — Joyce Carol Oates
Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it. — Joyce Carol Oates
On their own, your eyes did not naturally discover the sky. — Joyce Carol Oates
A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.' — Joyce Carol Oates
Fame's carapace does not allow for easy breathing. — Joyce Carol Oates
She was one who wished to believe the human motives precede actions for she was (she had always been) a rational individual yet clearly there were times (was this one of those times?) when actions might precede motives and even render them useless. — Joyce Carol Oates
You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There's a comfort in this fact perhaps. I want to think that there must be comfort in all facts we can't alter. — Joyce Carol Oates
Art does the same things dreams do. We have a hunger for dreams and art fulfills that hunger. So much of real life is a disappointment. That's why we have art. — Joyce Carol Oates
She examined me, she looked at me critically and said, "Why are you trying to starve yourself?" To keep myself from feeling love, from feeling lust, from feeling anything at all. — Joyce Carol Oates
Perhaps the inevitable tragedy of our complex civilization is that we must be specialists in our fields - and our fields have become increasingly difficult, so that communication is nearly impossible. — Joyce Carol Oates
Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious-why are we born? why when and as we are?-so too are the beginnings of works of art and of artists. — Joyce Carol Oates
My governing principle as a critic is to call attention solely to books and writers that merit such attention, and to avoid whenever possible reviewing books "negatively" except in those instances in which the "negative" is countered by an admiring consideration of earlier books by the same author. — Joyce Carol Oates
Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored; or damned with condescending praise. — Joyce Carol Oates
And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self. — Joyce Carol Oates
Time is the enemy of lovers. Worse even than the frank light of day. — Joyce Carol Oates
The fact was that the woman lived the life she chose, she was happy in that life and it was no one's business after all but her own, my uncle's face darkening with blood as he spoke, my mother's fair fine skin pink as if smarting yet still I persisted, for I thought it such a horror, such a grief, yes and an embarrassment too, I said, "She's made a prison of this house, it's like she's a nun, it must be to punish herself," and my mother said quietly, angrily, "You don't know - what do you know! People do what they want to do. — Joyce Carol Oates
We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally. — Joyce Carol Oates
This determination to manage - to cope - to do as much unassisted as possible - is the Widow's prerogative. You might argue that it's a sign of her wish to appear to be - which is not the same as being - self-sufficient; or you might argue that it is a symptom of her derangement. But then, in the early minutes/hours/days of Widowhood - what is not, if examined closely, a symptom of derangement? — Joyce Carol Oates
But you are a solace just by existing, vividly in my thoughts if not here before me. — Joyce Carol Oates
Dust jackets are always something of an enigma to me. — Joyce Carol Oates
People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don't vote. They often don't elect politicians, so the politicians who are supporting them are really being very charitable, because they're not going to give them billions of dollars in campaign funds. — Joyce Carol Oates
To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up. — Joyce Carol Oates
Much of the time he lay part-dressed on his bed, sipping gin, and thinking, and thinking, - though what it was, of which he thought, he seemed not to know. — Joyce Carol Oates
Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of "playing". A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which "neighborhoods" have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of "neighbor childrens" houses or play in "backyards". In the absence of sidewalks in newer "gated" coummunities, children cannot "walk" to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A "playdate" is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.
In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you've been awaiting. — Joyce Carol Oates
He was eight years older than I was, most of the calendar year. — Joyce Carol Oates
Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as a comment on race relations in America more generally: we are 'roommates' with one another, but how well do we know one another? — Joyce Carol Oates
I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that. — Joyce Carol Oates
You don't understand! Gilbert turned his back on me, but he wouldn't have turned his back on God." Ariah — Joyce Carol Oates
As if whoever it was held that camera was her closest friend. Or maybe it was the camera that was her closest friend. — Joyce Carol Oates
Every scar in my face is worth it. — Joyce Carol Oates
I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather. — Joyce Carol Oates
The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well. — Joyce Carol Oates
Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality. — Joyce Carol Oates
I am snatching at things to prove my life. — Joyce Carol Oates
Truth must evolve' - how very convenient for liars. — Joyce Carol Oates
Corset,' Mrs. Erskine? I don't understand." Because she was trussed up in one herself, she couldn't comprehend how Ariah had escaped hers. — Joyce Carol Oates
Where there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too. — Joyce Carol Oates
The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought. — Joyce Carol Oates
I think we are all cats with nine lives, or even more. We must rejoice in our elusive catness. — Joyce Carol Oates
Burnaby wasn't a Christian but he behaved like a Christian is supposed to behave which made Colborne, a Christian, uncomfortable. — Joyce Carol Oates
In the subway the trains move so swiftly you can never catch your breath. Outside the grimy window that's a reflecting surface like a mirror mostly there are the rushing tunnel walls, that slow as the train slows for a station, and the doors open with a pneumatic hiss like the sigh of a great ugly beast, and passengers lurch off, and new passengers lurch on, and I lift my eyes hopeful and yearning Who will be my destiny? Which one of you? — Joyce Carol Oates
Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject. — Joyce Carol Oates
To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost. — Joyce Carol Oates
( ... ) I could "talk fast"
that's to say, without hesitating, stammering
most of the time
but there were categories of words, sentiments, I could never say, they'd have stuck in my throat. The embarrassment of it even whispering-teasing to Legs for instance 'Yeah you're my heart too!' or 'I love you' or 'I would die for you', nobody ever talked that way, mostly there was just my mother and me and we hardly talked at all. — Joyce Carol Oates
I'm nobody's daughter now. I'm through with that. — Joyce Carol Oates
There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it. — Joyce Carol Oates
Stalwart Zeno seemed oblivious, that faith in his daughter being alive after more than forty days did not compute with faith that Brett Kincaid would soon be arrested for a crime involving his daughter. — Joyce Carol Oates
I always instruct my students to write a great deal. Write a journal. Take notes. Write when you are feeling wretched, when your mind is about to break down ... who knows what will float up to the surface? I am an unashamed believer in the magical powers of dreams; dreams enhance us. Even nightmares may be marketable
there is something to be said for the conscious, calculating exorcism of nightmares, if they give to us such works as those of Dostoyevsky, Celine,and Kafka. So the most important thing is to write, and to write nearly every day, in sickness and in health. In a while, in a few weeks or a few years, you can always make sense of that jumble of impressions ... or perhaps it will suddenly reveal its sense to you. — Joyce Carol Oates
A writer's life is in his work, and that is the place to find him. — Joyce Carol Oates
didn't thank
didn't wave goodbye
didn't flutter the air with kisses
a mound of gifts unwrapped
bed unmade
no appetite
always elsewhere
though it was raining elsewhere
though strangers peopled the streets
though we at home slaved and
baked and wept and
hung ornaments
and perfumed the dark
did he marvel
did he thank
was he grateful did he know
was he human
was he there
always elsewhere:
didn't thank
didn't kiss
toothbrush stiffened with unuse
puppy whining in the hall
car battery dead
sweaters unraveled
was that human?
Went where? — Joyce Carol Oates
For the first time driving that day I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rushing through the emptiness of space. Spinning on its axis but they say you don't feel it, you can't experience it. But to feel it is to be scared and happy at once and to know that nothing matters but that you do what you want to do and what you do you are. And I knew I was moving into the future. There is not PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or ever to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it. — Joyce Carol Oates
To be entranced, to be driven, to be obsessed, to be under the spell of an emerging, not quite fully 'comprehended' narrative
this is the greatest happiness of the writer's life even as it burns us out and exhausts us, unfitting us for the placid contours of 'normality. — Joyce Carol Oates
Unyielding - Oh Norma Jeane leads a crazy life, you see - she has a former husband very jealous of her - he is her "ex" but he is — Joyce Carol Oates
She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her. — Joyce Carol Oates
Maybe he'd been mistaken, trying so hard to make his wife and young children happy. Maybe it's always a mistake, trying to assure the happiness of others. — Joyce Carol Oates
[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness. — Joyce Carol Oates
My writing is full of lives I might have led. — Joyce Carol Oates
I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all. — Joyce Carol Oates
Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat. — Joyce Carol Oates
The standards for horror fiction should be no less than those for 'serious literary' fiction in which originality of concept, depth of characters, and attentiveness to language are vitally important. — Joyce Carol Oates