American - Novelist | June 16, 1938 -
'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
LifeHeartNew YorkChildMeThink
One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.
LifeLostBringBeenAgainWhich
People have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists into their lives, into their physical houses and sort of live with portions of them. But they're not really deeply engaging with them.
HomeLiveGreatPeopleTryBring
Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write.
PeopleGoWriteThroughWhoMost
Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of this time. He thought it was terrible we had no anti-lynching laws, and he was also a feminist, and he was also very concerned with anti-Semitism. He was a good man, but he was hard on himself.
GoodTimeManGood ManThoughtHard
My own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of time contemplating endings. The final ending is usually arrived at simply by intuition.
GoodTimeWritingEndingReputation
I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I may spend part of morning writing the ending, the last 100 pages approximately, and then part of the morning revising the beginning. So the style of the novel has a consistency.
MorningStyleBeginningConsistency
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.
WorkCharacterArtBetterSometimes
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.
AgeWritingYoungMoreNeverAlways
All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.
LifeFamilyLoveWritingReading
I would suggest the widow do things the husband used to do, so he seems to be there with you. You will feel like just going to bed. It's so wonderful, going to bed.
HusbandFeelYouBedWillGoing
If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.
WorldRealityYouDifferencesLiving
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Joyce Carol Oates quotes