Best quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

FeminismSelf-CriticismAmericaMark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it was terrible we had no anti-lynching laws, and he was also a feminist, and he was also very concerned with anti-Semitism. He was a good man, but he was hard on himself.

LoveIdentitySelf-EsteemYet I will make you all love me and I will punish myself to spite your love.

IdentityPerceptionAppearanceIntelligenceStereotypesHer problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.

PoetryProseProse-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard.

DeterminationUncertaintyDecision-MakingSelf-ReflectionI 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.

HumorMisconceptionsGriefMost people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's 'Requiem Mass.' You know, it's very beautiful and elevated thoughts and some measure of dignity. I didn't have that experience at all. I had one pratfall after another.

LifeJoyLivingAddictionDear girl! Life is addictive. Yet we must live.

PeopleWritingVoiceNovelI've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel 'Black Water,' I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.

InspirationAuthenticityWritingI really love to set things in places that are real to me.

FameI wrote a novel called "Blonde," which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is like this mythical figure in our culture.

PassionPersonal GrowthWritingSelf-DiscoveryCareer AspirationsI never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.

It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation - but, then I couldn't be myself either.

KnowledgeJoyCommunicationOne of the large consolations for experiencing anything unpleasant is the knowledge that one can communicate it.

NatureIntrospectionObservationMy nature is orderly and observant and scrupulous and deeply introverted.

BooksConversationI remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.

ChallengeWriting ProcessI write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like groping along in the dark. I like writing and find it challenging, but I don't find it easy.

WordsHow fascinating to a child are words: the shapes, sounds, textures and mysterious meanings of words; the way words link together into elastic patterns called "sentences." And these sentences into paragraphs, and beyond.

StorytellingLanguageI 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.

Hard WorkProblem-SolvingTime ManagementTeachingAs a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise.

LifeLovePassionTo love life for some men is to love fighting, for fighting, and not love, is seen as man's deepest passion.

AngerViolenceI could EAT YOUR HEART & asshole you'd never know it.

LanguageWhy the need, rising in some very nearly to the level of compulsion, to verify experience by way of language?-to scrupulously record and preserve the very passing of Time?

PovertyPeople 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.

SolitudePersonal GrowthProductivitySelf-ReflectionIndependenceProbably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.

BooksEnjoymentReadingThe books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

RoutineWritingCompanionshipThe domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of companionship, quiet, a predictable and consoling routine.

AmbitionStruggleJoyAmbitious, absorbing, and poignantly moving.

The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson did have a stroke as a relatively young man of 39 and seemed always to be ill. He was 'high-strung' - intensely neurotic - yet a charismatic personality nonetheless.

There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.

ExpectationsSelf-RelianceLetting GoShe thought that this man was her savior, that he had come to her at a time in her life when her life demanded completion, an end, a permanent fixing of all that was troubled and shifting and deadly. And yet it was absurd to think this. No person could save another. So she drew back from him and released him.

LifeCharactersNovelTo be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them.

LegacyWritingImpactYou are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.

BooksCuriosityReadingLiteratureI am always reading or thinking about reading.

WritingLiteratureNovelThe novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure.

ArtistsMysteryJust 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.

GenerationMy grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated.

VanityEmotionsAgingI used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.

IdentityPerceptionSelf-AwarenessConsciousnessSubjectivityYet the fact had no consciousness of itself except through me.

NovelThe novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day-a way of relating.

IntuitionWriting ProcessContemplationMeditationMy own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of time contemplating endings. The final ending is usually arrived at simply by intuition.

OpportunityEducationWritingPersonal LifeMy writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

LifeVulnerabilityProtectionOur house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

FeminismWomen's RightsI am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.

ChildhoodImaginationMemoriesChildhood is the province of the imagination and when I immerse myself in it, I re-create it as it was, as it could have been, as I wanted - and didn't want - it to be.

BeliefReligionAmericaIdealismAmerica is a very religious nation. Not a mono-religious nation because there are many different strands of belief, but there's something about this nation that inspires people, or perhaps draws people, who are strongly idealistic.

StorytellingArtistic ProcessIn a sense, I may not consciously know what I'm doing. I feel that I'm telling a story. I'm a kind of medium by which something is transmitted.

CreativityTime ManagementRegretFrustrationI think what distresses me most in my life is that I have so many ideas I consider exciting ideas that I will never live to execute because it takes me so long to execute.

IndividualitySelf-PerceptionSelf-IdentityPersonalityI don't know whether I am different from other people. Perhaps I am. Perhaps no one has a personality, and people are inventing themselves in the context in which they find themselves.

Self-PerceptionWritingComparisonIt's hard to say how we compare to other people. We each inhabit our own personalities. I have often felt that I'm a very neutral being and that I have almost no personality. I'm drawn to writing partly because I'm fascinated by the mimetic process.

WritingWhen one crosses over from an activity, or the verb, of writing or doing, and becomes a noun, like "a writer" I think that is an act of supreme self-consciousness that I've never, in effect, made. I write, but I don't like to think of myself as a writer. I think it's somewhat self-aggrandizing and pretentious. Now, I am a teacher.

ResilienceIntegrityI've always been so interested in personal history. I'm very fascinated by my parents' and my grandparents' generations. I seem to think that they had a resilience and an integrity that may be somewhat deficient in my own generation, and in subsequent generations as well, because America has been rather easy to live in since the Depression.

MaterialismPersonal ValuesI turn down invitations to do things for money. I have almost no interest in making money. Actually, I've acquired a fair amount of money that I will never live to spend. So earning money, in a way, depresses me, because I feel it's just piling up.

ConnectionWritingBy the way of connecting with subject, with theme, I was able to find a kind of lifeline. Writing's like a lifeline. You have to get the right way in. Otherwise the material just lies there, and you can't do anything with it.

CreativitySelf-ExpressionWriting ProcessA writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

SuccessWritersVery few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates.

RecognitionJoyAppreciationA good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.

TimeAppreciationCelebrationcelebrate while you can

RecognitionPerceptionSelf-BeliefOne man's insanity is another man's genius; someday the world will recognize the genius in my insanity.

I'm sure all that you've heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.

NovelsSelf-AwarenessWritersWriters are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel.

Personal GrowthIdentityInfluenceWritingDetroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse.

Childhood MemoriesReadingLiteratureEven as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside.

PoetryLanguageCommunicationProseProse-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.

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.

Budapest in late May is a city of lilacs. The sweet, languid, rather sleepy smell of lilacs wafts everywhere. And it is a city of lovers, many of them quite middle-aged. Walking with their arms around each other, embracing and kissing on park benches. A sensuousness very much bound up (it seems to me) with the heady ubiquitous smell of lilacs.

PovertyFor some reason, voters can be brainwashed, and they vote sometimes against their own best interests, let alone voting against the interests of people who need them, like people who are disenfranchised and people who are poor and so forth.

LibrariesPeople have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists into their lives, into their physical houses and sort of live with portions of them. But they're not really deeply engaging with them.

BooksPassionEnthusiasmReadingDependencyI read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.

Family'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing way of American life, and to my own particular child - and girlhood in upstate New York. Everyone in the novel is enormously close to me, including Marianne's cat, Muffin, who was in fact my own cat.

DeathGriefWhen my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.

AmericaNovelYes, '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?

Ненависть LovePowerLove commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.

The joyous fulfillment of your sex : the sacred duties of beloved wife, and helpmeet, and mother. In opposition to the vulgar and mercantile hurly-burly of the great world, the idyllic pleasures of the domestic hearth-the which, I firmly believe, make of one small room an everywhere, indeed; and provide us with that small measure of bliss, which is, if we are greatly fortunate, and deserving, Our Lord's promise to us, of the Heaven to come.

EmpathyHuman NatureSelf-AwarenessExistentialismConsciousness...[I am] utterly entranced, at times, with the mere fact that there are other people, and that they experience themselves as the primary center of consciousness just as I do. That fact alone...Well, that fact alone is staggering.