Quote

In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.

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
Drown
Spoken
Noise
Listen
Family

More quotes by 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
Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I've reached the ending.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Language is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?If it were not for language, could we lie?
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Not what the mind sees, but what the mind imagines the eye must see.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct?
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.
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
Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates.
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
Fame's carapace does not allow for easy breathing.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
A man will reveal his true self, or so it seems, on the tennis court.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
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.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.
Joyce Carol Oates