45 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates about writing

  • Author Joyce Carol Oates
  • Quote

    I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Joyce Carol Oates
  • Quote

    It would be difficult for a writer of realism to avoid suggesting a political/moral perspective in his or her fiction. "Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author Joyce Carol Oates
  • Quote

    When poets - write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful preparation of meals, the serving of meals, meals communally shared: a sense of the sacred in the profane.

  • Tags
  • Share





  • Author Joyce Carol Oates
  • Quote

    Writing allows for fictitious voices - the voices of persons unlike myself - that might otherwise be muted.

  • Tags
  • Share