Quote

By 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.

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
Like
Lying
Connecting
Anything
Theme
Able
Otherwise
Find
Material
Right
Subject
Writing
Materials
Kind
Lies
Lifeline
Way
Subjects
Lifelines

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Image
I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.
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
See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
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.
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
I don't believe in predestination - except for genetic predilections.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Like all virtuous people he imagines he must speak the truth.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Betrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming.
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
Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening, and not reading, quite fascinating.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Near the point of impact, time acelerates to the speed of light.
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
To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is the most haunting of her life, though it is one-sided and ends in tragedy.
Joyce Carol Oates