Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light. Joyce Carol Oates More Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates More Quotes From Joyce Carol Oates He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is her life. Joyce Carol Oates ugly women matter Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you? Joyce Carol Oates what-you-want should want Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening, and not reading, quite fascinating. Joyce Carol Oates reading listening book Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as a comment on race relations in America more generally: we are 'roommates' with one another, but how well do we know one another? Joyce Carol Oates girl race white To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it. Joyce Carol Oates dream writing people 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 childhood roots character I haven't the faintest idea what my royalties are. I haven't the faintest idea how many copies of books sold, or how many books that I've written. I could look these things up; I have no interest in them. I don't know how much money I have. There are a lot of things I just don't care about. Joyce Carol Oates book looks ideas The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial. Joyce Carol Oates reviews new-york book Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out? Joyce Carol Oates burning flames real '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. Joyce Carol Oates valentine new-york children I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization. Joyce Carol Oates perspective teaching trying I don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjects. Lighthearted material doesn't appeal to me, and I don't read it. I think I'm a realist, with a realistic sensibility of history and the tragedy of history. Joyce Carol Oates serious-subjects tragedy thinking 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. Joyce Carol Oates grandmother typewriters writing 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. Joyce Carol Oates brother mother morning When you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice. Joyce Carol Oates voice emotion writing Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel. Joyce Carol Oates scott-fitzgerald fables night What you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It's more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there's no sign of it, like it had never been. Joyce Carol Oates flames personality wind I have read on a Kindle. But the Kindle we had only worked for about eight months then it stopped working. You don't have to get books repaired. Joyce Carol Oates eight months book Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete. Joyce Carol Oates strange light darkness Acting is the loneliest profession I know. Joyce Carol Oates profession acting knows
