Quote

The 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.

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
Read
Enjoy
Substantial
Book
Review
Much
Reviews
Otherwise
York
Wouldn
Books

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Image
Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I had forgotten that time wasn't fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. I had forgotten that even misery can end.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.
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 never change, I simply become more myself.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
It'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 Oates
Image
Death is just the last scene of the last act.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I love insult, it's always honest.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
My 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Every scar in my face is worth it.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I 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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I compose most of my tweets with care, as if they were aphorisms - they are not usually dashed-off. Sometimes I'm surprised by the high, poetic quality of Twitter - it lends itself to a surreal sort of self-expression.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
When 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.
Joyce Carol Oates