Best quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

ListeningFamily DynamicsIn a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.

LoveStruggleAcceptanceLetting GoWhen you give up struggle, there's a kind of love.

IdentityImpermanenceWhat you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It's more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there's no sign of it, like it had never been.

TransformationRegretBlood transforms the warm bath water and, in it, I see weakly that this was a mistake. The razor's cut is not deep, nevertheless the blood rushes out happily in the warm water as if kin to it, the same tender substance. Rising a new person transformed with an icy sense of error I go to the sink and turn on cold water which is not friendly to blood. The cut is deeper than imagined.

DrivingFeelingFor 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.

LoveSelf-DiscoveryIndependenceLossLater, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident.

ChangeThe mere passage of time makes us all exiles.

Writing StyleTechnique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.

MysteryFictionFiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

CreativityIdentitySelf-ExpressionWorkA writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him.

CreativityHuman NatureChildrenI believe that the creative impulse is natural in all human beings, and that it is particularly powerful in children unless it is suppressed. Consequently, one is behaving normally and instinctively and healthily when one is creating - literature, art, music, or whatever. An excellent cook is also creative! I am disturbed that a natural human inclination [creative work] should, by some Freudian turn of phrase, be considered compulsive - perhaps even pathological. To me this is a complete misreading of the human enterprise. One should also enjoy one's work, and look forward to it daily.

EntertainmentActingDesireAll actors are whores. They want only one thing: to seduce you.

Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.

DestructionKeeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed.

SolitudeCreativityWritingMultitaskingIf you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.

ExpressionSelf-ExpressionCommunicationAt all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.

CreativityPersonal GrowthIdentityImaginationLiteratureI learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.

ArtGenerationRebellionArt is fueled by rebellion: the need, in some amounting to obsessions, to resist what is, to defy one's elders, even to the point of ostracism; to define oneself, and by extension one's generation, as new, novel, ungovernable.

LoveRecognitionFameActingDesireAn actress wants to be seen. An actress wants to be loved. By multitudes of people, not just one lone man.

HappinessLiving In The PresentThese are the moments for which we live.

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.

HappinessImaginationLanguageRunning! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.

NatureSolitudeExplorationReadingAs a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my 'farm chores' - but I had time also to be alone, to explore the fields, woods and creek side. And to read.

ArtDoubtThe ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

ReligionCelebrationBoxingBoxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

TimeIdentitySelf-AwarenessExistenceSpaceI am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?

ArtConnectionPoetryFoodNourishmentIf food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

ArtCultureI believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species.

PleasureIt feels good, honey, but it isn't love.

LoveRelationshipsEmotionsFeelingsAfter love a formal feeling comes.

DifferencesPerception Of RealityIf you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.

TruthStorytellingCommunicationNot even the most devastating truth can be told; it must be evoked.

FreedomIdentityGender RolesI suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.

Moving ForwardYou don't have to understand why anything that has happened nor do you even have to understand what it is that has happened. You have only to live with the remains.

You can't deny Eros. Eros wills trike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. And the god of Eros will flow through you, as Lawrence says, in the 'perfect obliteration of blood consciousness.

ImaginationFor the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.

DeterminationResilienceMoving ForwardOvercoming ObstaclesCherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.

TruthImaginationLike all virtuous people he imagines he must speak the truth.

PastUncertaintyFutureThere is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.

ReligionGod's blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.

LifeThe greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

ArtExplorationOriginalityPunishmentI believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.

БожевілляDesireExotic: meaning you're "desired." For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness. So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.

CreativityInspirationWritingWriting is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.

Self-DiscoveryPrioritiesExistentialismNone of the rest of my life figures here.

Musicthe music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon.

DivorceMarriageUnderstandingLossRelationshipWhen a marriage ends, who is left to understand it?

HappinessWorkThe cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming.

WritingAny writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write.

AdaptabilityImaginationA daydreamer is prepared for most things.

HungerLonelinessRealizationEatingLoneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.

StorytellingRewritingRevisionNovel WritingOnly when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

LoveRelationshipsCommunicationIn love there are two things - bodies and words.

CreativityPatienceExperienceWriter's BlockTimingI 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 just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.

ArtWritingConflictI think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

ValueSelf-WorthMindfulnessWe inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone – its value is incontestable.

LoveDeathMoralityRemembranceGriefImpossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.

WorldWritingHistoryIt seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

ArtEmotionsMy belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

IntrospectionSelf-CriticismSelf-AwarenessSelf-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

IdentityRelationshipsLearningTruthFamilyTruths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child.

Power DynamicsComplexityThe relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way.

Failure...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.

LifeForgettingOne of life's minor satisfactions is forgetting.

IdentityConnectionFamilyMemoryWe are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

WritingI 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.

LifeMortalityTheaterDeathDeath is just the last scene of the last act.

ArtLiteratureLiterature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.

FreedomPersonal ResponsibilityDeterminationSelf-Motivation"Because there has been no one to stop me" has been one of the principles of my life.

WritingGenderwhile there are 'women writers' there are not, and have never been, 'men writers.' This is an empty category, a class without specimens; for the noun 'writer' - the very verb 'writing' - always implies masculinity.

Gender DynamicsThe mysteries of the female sex! We men can never hope to fathom your depths, but only try not to drown in them.

MarriageThe institution of marriage is just formalizing an emotion, an attempt to make it seem permanent. The emotion will last or it won't last; nothing can guarantee it.

WritingMemoriesMuch of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.

PoliticsFor politics is in its essence as Adams had said, the 'systematic organization of hatred': either you were organized or you were not.