Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oatesis an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them, two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. Her novels Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde, and short story collections The Wheel of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 June 1938
CityLockport, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Joyce Carol Oates quotes about
Budapest in late May is a city of lilacs. The sweet, languid, rather sleepy smell of lilacs wafts everywhere. And it is a city of lovers, many of them quite middle-aged. Walking with their arms around each other, embracing and kissing on park benches. A sensuousness very much bound up (it seems to me) with the heady ubiquitous smell of lilacs.
If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.
It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation - but, then I couldn't be myself either.
It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
One of the large consolations for experiencing anything unpleasant is the knowledge that one can communicate it.
It's rare that we actively and consciously 'forget'; most of the time we have simply forgotten, with no consciousness of having forgotten. In individuals, the phenomenon is called 'denial'; in entire cultures and nations, it's usually called 'history.
After love a formal feeling comes.
The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.
Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.
My nature is orderly and observant and scrupulous and deeply introverted.
Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write.
No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.
For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?
[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness.