Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

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Joyce Carol Oates

Profession : Novelist

Birth : June 16, 1938

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Joyce Carol Oates

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

Joyce Carol Oates

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

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

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.

Joyce Carol Oates

My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.

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.

Joyce Carol Oates

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

Joyce Carol Oates