Explore Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall apart.

I'm drawn to failure. I feel like I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

I really love to set things in places that are real to me.

My parents were very proud of me. After they passed, my career doesn't mean as much to me.

My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself.

I am concerned with only one thing, the moral and social conditions of my generation.

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.

The most common misperception about me is that I write fast. I just write often. Every hour that I can.

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.

Dust jackets are always something of an enigma to me.

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.

My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives. We can't live without dreaming - as we can't live without sleep. We are 'conscious' beings for only a limited period of time, then we sink back into sleep - the 'unconscious.' It is nourishing, in ways we can't fully understand.

I consider tragedy the highest form of art.

Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.

In 'We Were the Mulvaneys,' animals are almost as important as people. I wanted to show the tenderness in our relationships with cats, dogs, and horses. Especially cats.

It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.

The best revenge is living well without you.

I never change, I simply become more myself.