Quote

After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.

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
Take
Grandmother
Would
Passed
Time
Parents
Think
Parent
Thinking
Imagine
Like
Felt
Away
Past

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Image
The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I always tell my students the same thing. And that's to live life, and to read very voraciously without any definite program. To travel, to meet people, to talk to people, to listen very carefully, and not interrupt, but listen to their own grandparents speak of their families.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Boxing has become America's tragic theater.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Nothing comes of so many things, if you have patience.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Because 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Her 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I learned you don't discover the evidence of any cause in its result.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
You cultivate the subconscious by meditation, by sitting in silence and by not trying to control your thoughts. Then go someplace where you haven't been before, or go for a walk, a run, and look for signs of grace-an epiphany, something that comes to you.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Even 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Most 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in line frequently these days, while on the phone having been 'put on hold.'
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Boxing is rough. Even if you win, you get hurt.
Joyce Carol Oates