816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

My nature is orderly and observant and scrupulous and deeply introverted.

Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.

Fame's carapace does not allow for easy breathing.

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

Great art is cathartic; it is always moral.

Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write.

To love life for some men is to love fighting, for fighting, and not love, is seen as man's deepest passion.

And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.