My students often say, ‘My roommate read this story and really liked it,’ and it’s hard to convince them that there are things wrong with it. I say, ‘Well, people who love you want you to be happy. But I’m your professor and I’m supposed to be teaching you something.’ Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Productivity is a relative matter. And it’s really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer’s strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones – just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
I haven’t any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that I don’t take a break for many hours – and consequently have breakfast at two or three in the afternoon on good days. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
As a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my ‘farm chores’ – but I had time also to be alone, to explore the fields, woods and creek side. And to read. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and ‘the life of the mind’ – and now, such subjects have become my life. Joyce Carol Oates Read Quote
