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 More Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates More Quotes From Joyce Carol Oates I love insult, it's always honest. Joyce Carol Oates insult honest The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives. Joyce Carol Oates denial suicidal writing I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties. Joyce Carol Oates twenties age writing 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 may character art She thought that this man was her savior, that he had come to her at a time in her life when her life demanded completion, an end, a permanent fixing of all that was troubled and shifting and deadly. And yet it was absurd to think this. No person could save another. So she drew back from him and released him. Joyce Carol Oates broken-heart men thinking The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me. Joyce Carol Oates eye reading spiritual 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. Joyce Carol Oates new-york dream country Every scar in my face is worth it. Joyce Carol Oates worth-it scar faces Henry James's later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indulgence, dictating to a secretary. The roaming garrulousness of ordinary speech is usually corrected when it's transcribed into written prose. Joyce Carol Oates speech self ordinary For the first time driving that day I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rushing through the emptiness of space. Spinning on its axis but they say you don't feel it, you can't experience it. But to feel it is to be scared and happy at once and to know that nothing matters but that you do what you want to do and what you do you are. And I knew I was moving into the future. There is not PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or ever to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it. Joyce Carol Oates axes past moving The best revenge is living well without you. Joyce Carol Oates live-well without-you revenge 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? Joyce Carol Oates reading self past When you give up struggle, there's a kind of love. Joyce Carol Oates giving-up kind struggle It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them. Joyce Carol Oates principles ears world She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her. Joyce Carol Oates ifs From Mother you will inherit the belief that you can journey to your fate, there's a place to be located on a map that's destiny. If only you can get there. If it isn't too late. If no one stops you. Joyce Carol Oates fate journey mother If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything. Joyce Carol Oates voice keys trying Her wish to die was as pervasive as a dial tone: you lift the receiver, it's always there. Joyce Carol Oates wish-to-die suicidal tone Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live. Joyce Carol Oates remember-something difficult facts I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul. Joyce Carol Oates hopeful soul believe
