Best quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

ConsciousnessHistoryForgettingIt's rare that we actively and consciously 'forget'; most of the time we have simply forgotten, with no consciousness of having forgotten. In individuals, the phenomenon is called 'denial'; in entire cultures and nations, it's usually called 'history.

CriticismCriticism 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.

DiversityInterviewsA diverse and lively collection, the highest art of the interview.

ArtSolitudeCreativityWritingAuthorshipWriting is the most solitary of arts.

BeliefWhy is humanism not the preeminent belief of humankind?

ResiliencePerseveranceVulnerabilityHopeWritersA writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside there dwells a frail, hopeful butterfly of a spirit.

AmbiguityMeaningBecause the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision.

ArtArt 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.

EmpathyValuesUpbringingCompassionI was brought up to be sympathetic toward others.

TruthPoliticsAt a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

AdmirationI have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

TechnologyReadingI have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired.

ChildhoodAnimalsAs a child. I grew up on a small farm, so I did a lot of drawings of animals, chickens and people. At the bottom of every page, I'd put a strange scribble. I was emulating adult handwriting, though I didn't actually know how to write.

SolitudeIdentityConnectionSelf-AwarenessCompanionshipNot to be alone. To be spared the possibility of knowing oneself, in aloneness.

MotivationWritingEncouragementNegativityEnergyYou need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

WarThe folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.

DifficultyThe other book that I worry no one reads anymore is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not easy, but every page is wonderful and repays the effort. I started reading it in high school, but I wasn't really able to grasp it. Then I read it in college. I once spent six weeks in a graduate seminar reading it. It takes that long. That's the problem. No one reads that way anymore. People may spend a week with a book, but not six.

SportsAmericaSocietyBoxingBoxing has become America's tragic theater.

SuccessPersonal ExperienceI can't say I was a very successful sorority girl.

ResilienceVulnerabilityHuman NatureSensitivityLike most people, I can be very easily hurt.

High SchoolI was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

HappinessLifeCreativityThe great happiness in life in creativity belongs to amateurs.

WritingMetaphorIf I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

TraditionHistoryTo 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.

PassionCreativityInspirationPersonal GrowthSelf-ExpressionIdeas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don't want them. What I want is a voice.

IndifferencePrioritizationWhoever was stupid was beneath worry or thought; you did not have to figure them out. This eliminated hundreds of people. In this life you had time only for a certain amount of thinking, and there was no need to waste any of it on people who were not threatening.

PersistenceAchievementDedicationPatienceNothing comes of so many things, if you have patience.

LifeThe great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.

ValuePerceptionEmotionsWritingExpectationsThe 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.

PerceptionChildhoodTransformationComplexityMemoriesYou people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.

CompetitionTalkingA lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour each other if possible.

FictionThe - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

ProgressGender EqualityPrinceton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s.

WritingLossRemembranceOne writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.

TrustTruthDeceptionLanguageCommunicationLanguage is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?If it were not for language, could we lie?

Writer's BlockMost people who are writers go through periods when they can't write.

ImpermanenceLossDarknessGriefStrange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.

LoveLove is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.

MemoryHistoryForgettingSignificanceWhat is memory but the repository of things doomed to be forgotten, so you must have History. You must have labor to invent History. Being faithful to all that happens to you of significance, recording days, dates, events, names, sights not relying merely upon memory which fades like a Polaroid print where you see the memory fading before your eyes like time itself retreating.

TeachingAnyone who teaches knows that you don't really experience a text until you've taught it, in loving detail, with an intelligent and responsive class.

ExistenceInventionFoodFood doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.

LifeConsequencesCommunicationThe denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.

ThinkingReadingThe written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.

AuthenticityHonestyAppreciationPersonal PreferencesI love insult, it's always honest.

BeautySelf-PerceptionAcceptanceEvery scar in my face is worth it.

Personal GrowthMoving OnLetting GoThe best revenge is living well without you.

HappinessPersonal GrowthWhy should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?

Childhood MemoriesI'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.

ImpermanenceMetaphorRealityLike a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?

TrustTruthDeceptionHuman NatureWe are the species that clamors to be lied to.

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.

LoveRelationshipsDeceptionImaginationRealityBut he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch, stare into one another's faces, shake their heads clear, move on, forget. It doesn't happen.

LoveRelationshipsHurtBetrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.

NourishmentWe 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.

EmotionsHurtFor what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.

PerceptionConfusionInterpretationComplexityWas it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?

ArtCreativityInspirationChildhoodWritingWhen I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.

WritingAnticipationAudienceAuthorsDon't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

БільReliefSecretsWhen I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family life and the lies of certain individuals close to me, with the detachment of time. I wanted to tell the truth about secrets: How much pain they give, yet how much relief, even happiness we may feel when at last the motive for secrecy has passed.

IndividualityIndependenceSelf-RelianceSelfMy self is all to me. I don't have any need of you.

CultureAmericaWho is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct?

EgoBoxingThe punishment – to the body, the brain, the spirit – a man must endure to become even a moderately good boxer is inconceivable to most of us whose idea of personal risk is largely ego-related or emotional.

PerceptionCriticismInterpretationCritics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

DeathSurvivalGriefOf the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.

LifePerceptionTransformationIdeasRealityThat's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.

AngerSelf-ReflectionFrustrationIt makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.

LoveTrustOnly in love is there trust - even the possibility of trust.

MotherhoodDangerThe danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.

AwarenessPerceptionKnowledgeLanguageLimitationsParadox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.

LoveSacrificeRelationshipShe wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.

Time ManagementCommunicationTechnologyThis was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just didn't pick up the phone.

Personal GrowthRepetitionCourageMemoryMemory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.

IdentitySelf-ReflectionWhoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?

HappinessLifeConfusionFor what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?