Joyce Carol Oates Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Space, Juncture, Standing

  8 Copy quote

• The quiet people just do their work.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Quiet People, People, Routine

  11 Copy quote

• When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Reality, People

  New York Times, July 27, 1980.

  4 Copy quote

• There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Taken, Realizing, Hours

  Joyce Carol Oates (2008). “Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway”, Ecco

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Distance, Oxygen, Parent

  6 Copy quote

• Often in gothic novels there's a large house, an estate, and it's symbolic of that culture. Usually it's sort of moldering or rotted or something, and sometimes it's a whole community.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  House, Community, Culture

  Interview with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. May 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• My students often say, "My roommate read this story and really liked it", and it's hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, "well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I'm your professor and I'm supposed to be teaching you something."

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Love You, Teaching, People

  "The grandmother of invention". Interview with Sarah Crown, www.theguardian.com. September 10, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• I'm nobody's daughter now. I'm through with that.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Daughter

  4 Copy quote

• Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Ideas, Numbers

  4 Copy quote

• What madness! Yet she would do it, if she could force herself. She'd become, she believed, a stronger person: a willful, resolute. Like the man who adored her, reckless.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Men, Stronger, Madness

  4 Copy quote

• The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Men, Boxing, Rings

  "On Boxing". Book by Joyce Carol Oates, 1987.

  10 Copy quote

• How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Spring, Being In Love, Mysterious

  7 Copy quote

• No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Stories, Storytelling

  "Joyce Carol Oates: 'I had a dream about a woman whose make-up was dried and cracking, she made a fool of herself'". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 25, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Thinking, Trying, Way

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Girl, Two, White

  4 Copy quote

• Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Pain, Winning, Boxing

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “On Boxing”, p.25, Harper Collins

  8 Copy quote

• 'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Children, War, Race

  4 Copy quote

• Where there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Girl, Daddy, Choices

  4 Copy quote

• I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Artist, Thinking, People

  CNN's Book Chat, www.cnn.com.

  4 Copy quote

• I think whenever we think of our hometowns, we tend to think of very specific people: with whom you rode on the school bus, who was your next door neighbor you were playing with, who your girlfriend was. It's always something very specific.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Girlfriend, School, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Passion, Ashamed, Subjects

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.23, Zondervan

  4 Copy quote

• When I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day. At those times, it's as though I'm writing a letter to someone I'm desperately in love with.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Letters, Hours

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.167, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Important, Matter

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.63, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  5 Copy quote

• What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Family, Memories, Kitchen

  Joyce Carol Oates (2001). “We Were the Mulvaneys”, p.18, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Boxing, Life Is Like, Life Is

  "On Boxing". Book by Joyce Carol Oates, 1987.

  4 Copy quote

Page 9 of 19

First

← Prev

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin