816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.

Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of "form" to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

None of the rest of my life figures here.

Like most people, I can be very easily hurt.

Long ago I'd said that I am "fascinated by the phantasmagoria of human personality" - this is perhaps even truer now than years ago.

Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious-why are we born? why when and as we are?-so too are the beginnings of works of art and of "artists.