Best quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

ChallengesIt's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.

Joyce Carol OatesNothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

SurvivalOf our hurts we make monuments of survival. If we survive.

RedemptionThere is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.

HistoryI don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjects. Lighthearted material doesn't appeal to me, and I don't read it. I think I'm a realist, with a realistic sensibility of history and the tragedy of history.

TruthAttractionConfusion. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.

DedicationPerseveranceDespairProductivityWriting ProcessWhen writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

FailureStruggleWritingAnd I’m drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I’m sympathetic with it, I think, because I feel I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.

EmotionsPoetryWhen you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice.

WritingLossSurvivalGriefAfter my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.

GuiltGriefA lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

PowerWritersFor obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.

ChallengesActingExperienceLonelinessActing is the loneliest profession I know.

TelevisionThe television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn't there something reassuring about it! -- that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another's eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms -- nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?

ArtWithout craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.

DisciplineProductivityWritingTime ManagementI haven't any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that I don't take a break for many hours - and consequently have breakfast at two or three in the afternoon on good days.

WritingMysteryThe appeal of writing is primarily the investigation of mystery.

LifeAppearanceGenderSocietyHe was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life.

AcceptanceYou 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.

HappinessFulfillmentOnly when men are connected to large, universal goals are they really happy-and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity.

Self-ExpressionCompetitionHuman BehaviorA man will reveal his true self, or so it seems, on the tennis court.

LifeUnpredictabilityThis is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash.

'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.

ExplorationI'm very American in the sense of being an explorer. America is filled with people who are interested in exploring landscapes, either external or internal. A westward nation of explorers.

ReadingLiteratureEnlightenmentI don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

BeautyJoyce Carol OatesThere is a terrible weight in all kinds of beauty

CommunicationTragedyComplexityPerhaps 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.

SymbolismOften in gothic novels there's a large house, an estate, and it's symbolic of that culture. Usually it's sort of moldering or rotted or something, and sometimes it's a whole community.

ArtLiteratureI don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work.

PassionDedicationWriting ProcessWhen I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day. At those times, it's as though I'm writing a letter to someone I'm desperately in love with.

Work EthicProductivityThe quiet people just do their work.

PassionExpressionSelf-AcceptanceShameNever be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.

ImpermanenceRealizationThere is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.

ChildhoodDreamingFlying fosters fantasies of childhood, of omnipotence, rapid shifts of being, miraculous moments; it stirs our capacity for dreaming.

TeachingMy students often say, "My roommate read this story and really liked it", and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, "well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something."

Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored; or damned with condescending praise.

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.

IntrospectionExhaustionLonelinessAlone, she took hot baths and sat exhausted in the steaming water, wondering at her perpetual exhaustion. All that winter she noticed the limp, languid weight of her arms, her veins bulging slightly with the pressure of her extreme weariness ... one day in January she drew a razor blade lightly across the inside of her arm, near the elbow, to see what would happen.

ArtWritingI think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.

Childhood MemoriesI think whenever we think of our hometowns, we tend to think of very specific people: with whom you rode on the school bus, who was your next door neighbor you were playing with, who your girlfriend was. It's always something very specific.

PerceptionUncertaintyMetaphor... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.

Artistic ExpressionMoralityGreat art is cathartic; it is always moral.

LoveGender RolesSelf-WorthSocietal ExpectationsPunishmentYour punishment if you're a woman. Not loved enough.

AmbitionEducationOvercoming ObstaclesI come from people who did not go to college. They didn't even finish high school. People who one might call ordinary Americans who are very hardworking.

ProgressPerseveranceProductivitySelf-ReflectionProcessI work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.

It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.

To claim - to claim repeatedly - that you are innocent of what it is claimed by others that you have done, or might have done, or are in some quarters strongly suspected of having done, is never enough unless others, numerous others, will say it for you.

To the west, the Pacific Ocean, which revulses me, for its vastness cannot be fitted into any box.

LifeBoxingLife is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

LoveRelationshipsFamilyAmong many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding.

FamilyMemoriesWhat is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

SuccessFameIdentityPressureFame's carapace does not allow for easy breathing.

WinningBoxingBoxing is rough. Even if you win, you get hurt.

LossFaithAcceptanceGodAnd so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.

LifeMetaphorBoxingI can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing--for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

AnalysisInsomniac is an impassioned work-an inspired amalgam of academic and first-hand research, memoir, analysis, and the kind of obsessive brooding we associate with the insomniac state. Much here is fascinating, and much is upsetting; here is a cri de coeur from a lifetime insomniac that is sure to appeal to the vast army of fellow insomniacs the world over.

BeautyTransformationPoetryHow does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?

PhilosophyDespairSoulRebellionExistentialismThe despairing soul is a rebel.

QuestionsInnocenceChildrenThe innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.

Personal GrowthIdentitySelf-DiscoveryIndependenceLiberationI'm nobody's daughter now. I'm through with that.

BooksLifeCriticismRealityViolenceWhen people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

ProductivitySignificanceProductivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

GuiltHer 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.

WinningBoxingBoxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.

Gender RolesSocietal ExpectationsChildhood MemoriesWhere 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.

CreativityStorytellingWriting ProcessNovel WritingBefore you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

ImprovementWritingQualityRevisionIt's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

FriendshipTragedyDifferencesPrimarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls; for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is the most haunting of her life, though it is one-sided and ends in tragedy.

Role ModelsMy role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

HappinessLoveLongingMysteryHow mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.

LoveJoyStorytellingWriterStoriesNo, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

TraditionOur enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Self-ImprovementStrengthWhat madness! Yet she would do it, if she could force herself. She'd become, she believed, a stronger person: a willful, resolute. Like the man who adored her, reckless.