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
You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There's a comfort in this fact perhaps. I want to think that there must be comfort in all facts we can't alter.
you're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself.
If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.
I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.
I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?
A daydreamer is prepared for most things.
Beauty is a question of optics. All sight is illusion.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.
In love there are two things - bodies and words.
Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.
I'm drawn to failure. I feel that I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.