Quote

Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

Joyce Carol Oates

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Lockport
New York
Pure
Accidental
Law
Divinity
Universe
Accident
Science
Accidents
Nothing
Physics
Entire
Laws
Except

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Image
I 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
She 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Art 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The best revenge is living well without you.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
What 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
To 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I could EAT YOUR HEART & asshole you'd never know it.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
At all crucial moments in our lives we want to speak without knowing what to say.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Running! 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
How 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Dear girl! Life is addictive. Yet we must live.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
When 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
A man will reveal his true self, or so it seems, on the tennis court.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Art is the highest expression of the human spirit.
Joyce Carol Oates