816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

The distinction between "assistant" and intern" is a simple one: assistants are paid, interns are not.But of course interns are paid, in experience.

I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.

A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?

For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.

Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?

The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.