I’ve always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel ‘Black Water,’ I provide a voice for someone who has died and can’t speak for herself. – Joyce Carol Oates
Henry James’s later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indulgence, dictating to a secretary. The roaming garrulousness of ordinary speech is usually corrected when it’s transcribed into written prose. – 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
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. – Joyce Carol Oates
A writer can’t subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time. – Joyce Carol Oates
Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: ‘Keep trying, don’t give up, don’t be discouraged, don’t pay attention to detractors.’ Everyone knows this. – Joyce Carol Oates
Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside. – 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. – Joyce Carol Oates
It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence. – Joyce Carol Oates
As a child. I grew up on a small farm, so I did a lot of drawings of animals, chickens and people. At the bottom of every page, I’d put a strange scribble. I was emulating adult handwriting, though I didn’t actually know how to write. – Joyce Carol Oates
Novels usually evolve out of ‘character.’ Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence. – Joyce Carol Oates
I don’t feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it’s so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours. – 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.’ – 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. – Joyce Carol Oates
I compose most of my tweets with care, as if they were aphorisms – they are not usually dashed-off. Sometimes I’m surprised by the high, poetic quality of Twitter – it lends itself to a surreal sort of self-expression. – Joyce Carol Oates
A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It’s deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn’t stop you feeling it. – Joyce Carol Oates
Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. – Joyce Carol Oates
We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it. – 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. – Joyce Carol Oates
Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost. – Joyce Carol Oates
Where we come from in America no longer signifies. It’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are. – 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. – Joyce Carol Oates
Princeton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s. – Joyce Carol Oates
