“ It was hard not to exude the air of a martyr, if one did just slightly more than the other, as it seemed Mickey frequently did. Joyce Carol Oates
“ It is perhaps not commonly known that a Negro heavyweight championship title existed from 1902 to 1932 when many white champions (including John L. Sullivan, Jim Jeffries, Jack Dempsey) refused to fig… Joyce Carol Oates
“ If she lets us down, if she’s weird sometimes—just ignore it, and love her. Just love her. Joyce Carol Oates
“ Alone,alone! It is a fact, you hear more acutely and you see and think most acutely,when you are alone.Alone, alone! But there is happiness in alone, if you believe you have chosen it. Joyce Carol Oates
“ Miles away, factory smokestacks rimmed with flame sent up cast billowing clouds of smoke that gave watercolor look to the sky – orange yellow – a pink cast like dawn – beauty to the gray-layered winte… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Dorcas wasn't a fast walker. It was difficult for me to keep behind her. I tried to let others, joggers, and bicyclists, come between us. I followed her past a field where girls were playing soccer, a… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind. Joyce Carol Oates
“ I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. ~ I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called “cu… Joyce Carol Oates
“ I feel very transparent in myself. I’m more of an observer. I’m interested in what’s going on. I’m not sure that I really have a personality. Some people think I do have a personality. I have a person… Joyce Carol Oates
“ The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so… Joyce Carol Oates
“ It had seemed to me an elegant nightmare concoction made by adults for adults, to further the aims and fantasies of adults, and what have children to do with such things? Joyce Carol Oates
“ But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch,… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Warum man schreibt, ist eine Frage die sich der Schriftsteller, völlig versunken in seine Arbeit, nicht stellt. Theorien sind das Gebiet derer, die nicht handeln. Joyce Carol Oates
“ When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowar… 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…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything. Joyce Carol Oates
