Joyce Carol Oates Quotes About Character

Quotes about: Character

• 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.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Voice, Challenges

  "A Portrait of the Writer". Interview with Mia Funk, tinhouse.com. February 10, 2015.

• Characters begin as voices, then gain presence by being viewed in others' eyes. Characters define one another in dramatic contexts. It is often very exciting, when characters meet - out of their encounters, unanticipated stories can spring.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Spring, Character, Eye

  "A Portrait of the Writer". Interview with Mia Funk, tinhouse.com. February 10, 2015.

• I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Writing, Character

  "Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

• Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Should Have, Stories

• To choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Voice, Giving

  "Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

• There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Character, May

  "Off the Page: Joyce Carol Oates". The WashingtonPost Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. October 24, 2003.

• If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective; each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Play, Voice

  "Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

• To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Personality, True Life

  "A Reader’s Guide to the Recent Novels of Joyce Carol Oates". Interview, celestialtimepiece.com.

• We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Roots, Childhood

• My nature is orderly and observant and scrupulous and deeply introverted.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Introverted, Observant

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.68, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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