Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Explore a curated collection of 67 quotes by Joyce Carol Oates. Discover timeless wisdom, insightful thoughts, and memorable words that have inspired readers around the world. Browse through the gallery below and click on any quote to read more.

The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love. — Joyce Carol Oates
In love there are two things - bodies and words. — Joyce Carol Oates
A daydreamer is prepared for most things. — Joyce Carol Oates
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walk — Joyce Carol Oates
And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; th — Joyce Carol Oates
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always — Joyce Carol Oates
Unbidden, Unwelcome, Yet unable to resist, I entered a stranger's life — Joyce Carol Oates
Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst. — Joyce Carol Oates
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food? — Joyce Carol Oates
I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card — Joyce Carol Oates
When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, — Joyce Carol Oates
For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense tha — Joyce Carol Oates
The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives. — Joyce Carol Oates
I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and gi — Joyce Carol Oates
For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power. — Joyce Carol Oates
Warum man schreibt, ist eine Frage die sich der Schriftsteller, völlig versunken in seine Arbeit, nicht stellt. Theorien — Joyce Carol Oates
It isn't the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determines the worth of or — Joyce Carol Oates
I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and wome — Joyce Carol Oates
Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art. — Joyce Carol Oates
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, anoth — Joyce Carol Oates