Famous Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

  • Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose. – Joyce Carol Oates

    Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • There are some secrets so toxic you can’t share. Especially if you love who it is you’d have to share with. – Joyce Carol Oates

    There are some secrets so toxic you can’t share. Especially if you love who it is you’d have to share with.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • These are open secrets, so to speak. Of the kind we dare not articulate, for fear of wounding those close to us. – Joyce Carol Oates

    These are open secrets, so to speak. Of the kind we dare not articulate, for fear of wounding those close to us.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you’re no longer their child. – Joyce Carol Oates

    Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you’re no longer their child.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there’s no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them. – Joyce Carol Oates

    Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there’s no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can’t escape. Life was easier then. You just didn’t pick up the phone. – Joyce Carol Oates

    This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can’t escape. Life was easier then. You just didn’t pick up the phone.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it. – Joyce Carol Oates

    We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • Silence rolled at me, in – Joyce Carol Oates

    Silence rolled at me, in – Joyce Carol Oates

  • Memory blurs, that’s the point. If memory didn’t blur you wouldn’t have the fool’s courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart. – Joyce Carol Oates

    Memory blurs, that’s the point. If memory didn’t blur you wouldn’t have the fool’s courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.– Joyce Carol Oates

  • Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents. – Joyce Carol Oates

    Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.– Joyce Carol Oates