816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

İflah olmamak" bir yetişkinin senin davranışlarına itiraz etmesinden başka nedir ki?

No has fracasado, aunque no hayas estado a la altura de la exaltada idea que tienes de ti misma.

Momma was terrified of being really poor, dirt-poor, and men would know, always men can sniff out the degree of your desperation Momma believed, and force you to do things you don't want to do or don't exactly want to do at that time or in that place or in that way. When you have your own money, Momma said, you have power. But you can lose it Goddamned fast.

The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.

I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it.

There are boxers possessed of such remarkable intuition, such uncanny prescience, one would think they were somehow recalling their fights, not fighting them as we watch.

People have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists into their lives, into their physical houses and sort of live with portions of them. But they're not really deeply engaging with them.

My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.