Joyce Carol Oates quotes - page 5

Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply. (Joyce Carol Oates)
The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
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. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in line; frequently these days, while on the phone having been 'put on hold.' View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own. (Joyce Carol Oates)
Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
I really love to set things in places that are real to me. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Like most people, I can be very easily hurt. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
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. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Princeton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
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. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don't vote. They often don't elect politicians, so the politicians who are supporting them are really being very charitable, because they're not going to give them billions of dollars in campaign funds. (Joyce Carol Oates)
Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's 'Requiem Mass.' You know, it's very beautiful and elevated thoughts and some measure of dignity. I didn't have that experience at all. I had one pratfall after another. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don't think of them as work in the usual sense of the word. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates