816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

I’m sure all that you’ve heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.

There’s a sort of melancholy romance to the experience of being lonesome. I think of reading as a kind of romantic alone activity that you’re doing. The image would include being curled up somewhere on a rainy day and you’re reading very intensely involved in a world that no one can see because it’s inside your head.

Writing is a consequence of having been ‘haunted’ by material. Why this is, no one knows.

Perhaps the inevitable tragedy of our complex civilization is that we must be specialists in our fields – and our fields have become increasingly difficult, so that communication is nearly impossible.

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

One of life’s minor satisfactions is forgetting.

The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you’ve done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well.

I believe in uttering the truth, even if it hurts. Particularly if it hurts.

Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can return.