816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

I’m drawn to failure. I feel that I’m contending with it constantly in my own life.

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I’ve written.

Love you in that cheerleader’s costume. Last Friday. You didn’t see me I guess. But I was there.

As if whoever it was held that camera was her closest friend. Or maybe it was the camera that was her closest friend.

Art does the same things dreams do. We have a hunger for dreams and art fulfills that hunger. So much of real life is a disappointment. That’s why we have art.

Evil isn’t a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior.

I don’t read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I’m also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can’t know it will be the last.

Ideas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don’t want them. What I want is a voice.