Joyce Carol Oates Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Apology, Want

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.24, Zondervan

• 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

  Writing, Soul, Cards

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.65, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Goal, Wasting Time

• If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Wall, Writing, Space

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Writing, Creative

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.12, Zondervan

• I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Husband, Writing, Cat

• Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming - In thinking, not writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Dream, Writing, Thinking

• If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Food, Writing, Poetry Is

  Joyce Carol Oates (1989). “(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities”, Plume

• I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Block, Writing, Thinking

• I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  "Joyce Carol Oates: 'I had a dream about a woman whose make-up was dried and cracking, she made a fool of herself'". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 25, 2012.

• 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 cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Real, Stupid, Silly

• 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.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Beautiful, Writing, Looks

  Source: www.achievement.org

• I haven't any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that I don't take a break for many hours - and consequently have breakfast at two or three in the afternoon on good days.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Morning, Writing, Good Day

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.65, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Firsts, Finals

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.140, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Loneliness, Writing, Hazards

  "A Widow’s Story" by Joyce Carol Oates, www.newyorker.com. December 13, 2010.

• Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Communication, Writing, Voice

  Joyce Carol Oates (1989). “(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities”, Plume

• Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Reading, Writing, Trying

• On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Crafts, Austerity

• Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Editors, Remember

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.67, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I can't imagine a mental life, a spiritual existence, not inextricably bound up with language of a formal, mediated nature. Telling stories, choosing an appropriate language with which to tell the story: This seems to me quintessentially human, one of the great adventures of our species.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Spiritual, Writing, Adventure

• 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.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Children, Writing, Together

• The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Silence, Use

• I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Giving Up, Writing

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.66, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Materials, Knows

• I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Freedom, Writing, Men

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