Quotessence
Home / Authors / Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingIfsPeopleThinkingArtKnowsNovelMightWayBookStoriesVoiceMenSelfWorldFeelsReadingSeemsHumansKind

Famous Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

“On the set Norma Jeane was quiet and respectful and watchful and shrewd. Now she'd solved the puzzle of her own role, it fascinated her to see how others had solved, or were struggling with, theirs. For acting is the solving of a succession of puzzles of which no single puzzle can explain the others. For the actor is a succession of selves held together by the promise that in acting all losses can be restored.”

SelfLossActingSolvePuzzleRole
Book:Blonde
Create image

“Of course, both [Oscar] Wilde & [Vladimir] Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly - for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.)”

WritingBelieveKindSelfCoursesIndividualNovelPossibilitySuperiorsFollyHeroicHumankindOscarsTranscendenceGrandeurPrevailingLoneWildeAda
Author:Joyce Carol Oates
Create image

“When one crosses over from an activity, or the verb, of writing or doing, and becomes a noun, like "a writer" I think that is an act of supreme self-consciousness that I've never, in effect, made. I write, but I don't like to think of myself as a writer. I think it's somewhat self-aggrandizing and pretentious. Now, I am a teacher.”

ThinkingWritingMadeSelfConsciousnessTeacherEffectsActivityCrossesSupremeVerbsPretentiousSelf ConsciousnessNouns
Author:Joyce Carol Oates
Create image

“Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?”

IfsKnowsLongDoeSelfMatterEnoughPastReadingLostSourceMouthsRiversConnectionsMilesDoes It MatterOld Self
Book:Foxfire: confessions of a girl gang
Create image