American - Novelist | June 16, 1938 -
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
New YorkEnjoyNewReviewBooks
Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.
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After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
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As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise.
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It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.
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A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.
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Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.
LoveLove IsConvictionSense
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.
HopeExperienceListeningReading
A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'
MemoriesDegreeHighFictionTypical
If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.
GoodMyselfEffortOpinionBookOut
If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.
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Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.
TogetherIdeasEnoughYouWrite
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