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. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
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. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
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. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
After my husband died, I could not write much – I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes – not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Novels usually evolve out of ‘character.’ Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
