“And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.” ThinkingWayTryingLostMadnessGrants Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“Though I am never exactly "blocked" I do have difficult periods. I am led by a fascination with material - the challenge of presenting it in an original and engaging way. I have no problem imagining stories, characters, distinctive settings & themes - but the difficulty is choosing a voice & a language in which to present it.” WayCharacterStoriesProblemLanguageDifficultVoiceChallengesMaterialsPeriodsDifficultyOriginalsSettingSettingsThemeEngagingNo ProblemFascinationPresentingDistinctiveBlocked Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“I work very slowly. It's like building a ladder, where you're building your own ladder rung by rung, and you're climbing the ladder. It's not the best way to build a ladder, but I don't know any other way.” KnowsWayBuildingBest WayClimbingLaddersClimbing The Ladder Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“The other book that I worry no one reads anymore is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not easy, but every page is wonderful and repays the effort. I started reading it in high school, but I wasn't really able to grasp it. Then I read it in college. I once spent six weeks in a graduate seminar reading it. It takes that long. That's the problem. No one reads that way anymore. People may spend a week with a book, but not six.” PeopleWayMayLongBookProblemAbleSchoolReadingEasyEffortWorryWonderfulWeekCollegeSixPagesHigh SchoolGraduatesJoyceUlyssesSeminars Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“One of the qualities of writing that is not much stressed is its problem-solving aspect, having to do with the presentation of material: how to structure it, what sort of sentences (direct, elliptical, simple or compound, syntactically elaborate), what tone (in art, "tone" is everything), pacing. Paragraphing is a way of dramatization, as the look of a poem on a page is dramatic; where to break lines, where to end sentences.” WayWritingLooksArtEndsProblemLinesSimpleQualityBreakMaterialsPagesAspectDirectStructureSentencesDramaticToneProblem SolvingPresentationStressedCompoundsPacing Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“I see the world in ways that might be considered somewhat harsh and Darwinistic. At the same time mediated, as in Darwin, by a real idealism and an excitement about the possibilities of the intellect and imagination to deal with this somewhat brutal world.” WorldWayRealMightImaginationDealsPossibilityIntellectExcitementBrutalHarshIdealism Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“By the way of connecting with subject, with theme, I was able to find a kind of lifeline. Writing's like a lifeline. You have to get the right way in. Otherwise the material just lies there, and you can't do anything with it.” WayWritingKindAbleLyingSubjectsMaterialsThemeRight WayConnectingLifelines Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“I turn down invitations to do things for money. I have almost no interest in making money. Actually, I've acquired a fair amount of money that I will never live to spend. So earning money, in a way, depresses me, because I feel it's just piling up.” WayFeelsTurnsInterestAmountFairsMaking MoneyDepressingEarningInvitationsEarning Money Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“Henry David Thoreau is very independent-minded, very iconoclastic, and had quite a corrosive sense of humor. I think that I probably have grown up to have a Thoreauvian perspective on many things. Though in other ways I live a life he would not have approved of. He believed to simplify, simplify, simplify. Make your life very clear and plain and meditative and not confused. Sometimes my life, in fact, is confused.” ThinkingWaySometimesFactsClearPerspectiveIndependentConfusedSense Of HumorSimplifyApprovedDavid Thoreau Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“Look at the world and see what's there. It's very beautiful. It's a very exciting but in some ways treacherous world, and all this goes into the writing.” WorldWayWritingLooksBeautifulExcitingVery BeautifulTreacherous Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.” WayWritingSchoolNovelHigh School Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.” WayWritingVoiceFictionWonderfulCriticismCalmRationalProseEssaysRelaxationEssay Writing Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.” IfsWorldWayRealityDifferencesScientistSubtleHumanist Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“My own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of time contemplating endings. The final ending is usually arrived at simply by intuition.” WayWritingMovingMy OwnDealsFinalsIntuitionReputationDespiteContemplating Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.” WayWritingStoriesOpportunityToo MuchWitnessAffectedPersonal LifeBearing Witness Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is tremendously powerful, scarcely to be comprehended in any rational way.” WayChildrenMotherParentPowerfulDaughterRationalMother And DaughterChildren And Parents Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valentine to a passing way of American life, and to my own particular child - and girlhood in upstate New York. Everyone in the novel is enormously close to me, including Marianne's cat, Muffin, who was in fact my own cat.” ThinkingWayHeartChildrenFactsMy OwnNovelNew YorkParticularMy HeartCatIncludingPassingPassingsClosestValentineAmerican LifeGirlhoodMuffinsUpstate New York Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.” WayWritingFirstsLittlesDifferentNovelFiveFourAdultsDrawingMysteriousComicDifferent WaysGrandmotherMy GrandmotherTypewritersHandwritingComic StripsScribbles Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.” WayMayMotherMorningBrotherDiedMy BrotherShockStrokes Author: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 girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.” WayWritingCountryStatesDreamMightEconomicChildhoodNew YorkDifficultyWestFamiliarDreamerAmerican LifeBuffaloRecurringGirlhoodRochesterNew York StateUpstate New YorkRecurring Dreams Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“The novel is perhaps the highest art form because it so closely resembles life: it is about human relationships. It's technique, page by page, resembles our technique of living day by day-a way of relating.” WayHumansArtFormNovelHighestPagesTechniqueHuman RelationsHuman Relationships Author:Joyce Carol Oates
“Why the need, rising in some very nearly to the level of compulsion, to verify experience by way of language?-to scrupulously record and preserve the very passing of Time?” WayNeedsLanguageLevelsRecordsExperiencePassingPassingsPreservesRisingCompulsionVerify Book:(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities Source: (Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities
“How fascinating to a child are words: the shapes, sounds, textures and mysterious meanings of words; the way words link together into elastic patterns called "sentences." And these sentences into paragraphs, and beyond.” WayWritingChildrenTogetherSoundShapesPatternsSentencesMysteriousFascinatingLinksTextureParagraphMeanings Of Words Author:Joyce Carol Oates
