Authors — Quotes

Joyce Carol Oates Quotes: 15

I never change, I simply become more myself.
Solstice
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
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.
The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.
A daydreamer is prepared for most things.
Keep a light, hopeful heart. But expect the worst.
And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.
I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.
Death is just the last scene of the last act.
Blonde
I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall apart.
The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome"doubt.
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982
Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency,"or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.
The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982
A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?
Faithless: Tales of Transgression
When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.
The challenge is to resist circumstances. Any idiot can be happy in a happy place, but moral courage is required to be happy in a hellhole.
Mudwoman