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
A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'
Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.
What is memory but the repository of things doomed to be forgotten, so you must have History. You must have labor to invent History. Being faithful to all that happens to you of significance, recording days, dates, events, names, sights not relying merely upon memory which fades like a Polaroid print where you see the memory fading before your eyes like time itself retreating.
Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.
What does it mean to be born? After we die, will it be the same thing as it was before we were born? Or a different kind of nothingness? Because there might be knowledge then. Memory.
What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.
For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.
I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall apart.
Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls; for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is the most haunting of her life, though it is one-sided and ends in tragedy.
Where we come from in America no longer signifies. It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
I am concerned with only one thing, the moral and social conditions of my generation.
In 'We Were the Mulvaneys,' animals are almost as important as people. I wanted to show the tenderness in our relationships with cats, dogs, and horses. Especially cats.
Dust jackets are always something of an enigma to me.