Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oatesis an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them, two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. Her novels Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde, and short story collections The Wheel of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 June 1938
CityLockport, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Joyce Carol Oates quotes about
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.
Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.
Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.
I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.
I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.
I haven't the faintest idea what my royalties are. I haven't the faintest idea how many copies of books sold, or how many books that I've written. I could look these things up; I have no interest in them. I don't know how much money I have. There are a lot of things I just don't care about.
We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it.
The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.
Princeton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s.
Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.
One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.
No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.
My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.
Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write.