I got ahead from the first rapid, and then just put my head down. I never saw any of he other girls ...
CAROL JOYCE You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think ge...
JOYCE CAROL OATES When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think get...
JOYCE CAROL OATES In love there are two things -- bodies and words.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.
JOYCE CAROL OATES It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of anot...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
JOYCE CAROL OATES We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.
JOYCE CAROL OATES The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being los...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as sm...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that yo...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire univer...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make p...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out d...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only wor...
JOYCE CAROL OATES A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.
JOYCE CAROL OATES In love there are two things - bodies and words.
JOYCE CAROL OATES 'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terribl...
JOYCE CAROL OATES As a farm girl, even when I was quite young, I had my 'farm chores' - but I had time also to...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chron...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fict...
JOYCE CAROL OATES People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don't vote. They often ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES We are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and w...
JOYCE CAROL OATES This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Love is an indescribable sensation - perhaps a conviction, a sense of certitude.
JOYCE CAROL OATES ... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't...
JOYCE CAROL OATES My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes.
JOYCE CAROL OATES I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a stead...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I compose most of my tweets with care, as if they were aphorisms - they are not usually dashed-off. ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I always rewrite the very beginning of a novel. I rewrite the beginning as I write the ending, so I ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a h...
JOYCE CAROL OATES For some reason, voters can be brainwashed, and they vote sometimes against their own best interests...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I wrote a novel called 'Blonde,' which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe...
JOYCE CAROL OATES My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opp...
JOYCE CAROL OATES My self is all to me. I don't have any need of you.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Mark Twain was very unhappy with himself for various reasons. He was very unhappy with America of th...
JOYCE CAROL OATES A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've i...
JOYCE CAROL OATES 'We Were the Mulvaneys' is perhaps the novel closest to my heart. I think of it as a valenti...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The relationship between parents and children, but especially between mothers and daughters, is trem...
JOYCE CAROL OATES When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long...
JOYCE CAROL OATES When I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the wo...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Boxing has become America's tragic theater.
JOYCE CAROL OATES When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged t...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Nothing is accidental in the universe -- this is one of my Laws of Physics -- except the entire univ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an in...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forg...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was hi...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Dust jackets are always something of an enigma to me.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Often in gothic novels there's a large house, an estate, and it's symbolic of that culture. ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fate...
JOYCE CAROL OATES All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading co...
JOYCE CAROL OATES My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intell...
JOYCE CAROL OATES If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's '...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I never change, I simply become more myself.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Legs was always proud even before FOXFIRE, that’s the primary fact about Legs Sadovsky: pride.
JOYCE CAROL OATES ... because the Legs wasn't fearful of heights or swimming in rough water or Death itself she wasn't...
JOYCE CAROL OATES 'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would t...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjec...
JOYCE CAROL OATES When you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Lawrence is the supreme poet of Eros. No recriminations, no reproaches, no guilt, no 'morality'. For...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I consider tragedy the highest form of art.
JOYCE CAROL OATES The worst cynicism: a belief in luck
JOYCE CAROL OATES Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound st...
JOYCE CAROL OATES To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next st...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have al...
JOYCE CAROL OATES When poets write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the tho...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.
JOYCE CAROL OATES If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
JOYCE CAROL OATES If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, d...
JOYCE CAROL OATES In love there are two things - bodies and words
JOYCE CAROL OATES Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.
JOYCE CAROL OATES To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.
JOYCE CAROL OATES The Falls ... a story written with Shakespearean proportions, pitting the power of blood ties agains...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I feel that in my novel I'm trying to re-address that imbalance and allow people to see that Norma J...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Lots of people I was starting to hate who I used to like a lot. But when you like people, you can hu...
JOYCE CAROL OATES She ransacked her mind but there was nothing in it
JOYCE CAROL OATES Where we come from in America no longer signifies. It's where we go, and what we do when we get ther...
JOYCE CAROL OATES We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sa...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The worst cynicism: a belief in luck
JOYCE CAROL OATES But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy loopi...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?
JOYCE CAROL OATES Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.
JOYCE CAROL OATES The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.
JOYCE CAROL OATES The gym cat appears to those who will die. He is our totem." This thought came to me a few weeks ago...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Maybe, love is always forgiveness, to a degree.
JOYCE CAROL OATES See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Our house is made of glass . . . and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Study until twenty five, investigate until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES the United States government was at the mercy of special-interest groups, lobbies like the National ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amor...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I haven't the faintest idea what my royalties are. I haven't the faintest idea how many copi...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other peo...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Anyone who teaches knows that you don't really experience a text until you've taught it, in ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Henry James's later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indul...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.
JOYCE CAROL OATES It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
JOYCE CAROL OATES I am made to think, not for the first time, that in my writing I have plunged ahead-head-on, heedles...
JOYCE CAROL OATES As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The historical Woodrow Wilson suffered from numerous complaints which we might today label as psycho...
JOYCE CAROL OATES As soon as I moved to Princeton in 1978, I became fascinated by local history, much of it Revolution...
JOYCE CAROL OATES To the young there are no degrees of old just as there are no degrees of dead - either you are, or y...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, an...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you ca...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I would suggest the widow do things the husband used to do, so he seems to be there with you. You wi...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of...
JOYCE CAROL OATES He was ugly, himself. Weird-ugly. But ugliness in a man doesn't matter, much. Ugliness in a woman is...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temp...
JOYCE CAROL OATES There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least...
JOYCE CAROL OATES A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony...
JOYCE CAROL OATES As a child. I grew up on a small farm, so I did a lot of drawings of animals, chickens and people. A...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.
JOYCE CAROL OATES Death is just the last scene of the last act.
JOYCE CAROL OATES I am concerned with only one thing, the moral and social conditions of my generation.
JOYCE CAROL OATES One man's insanity is another man's genius; someday the world will recognize the genius in my insani...
JOYCE CAROL OATES A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work prod...
JOYCE CAROL OATES My dis-interest in what people speak of as "women's problems," "women's literature." Have women a sp...
JOYCE CAROL OATES And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to whic...
JOYCE CAROL OATES What you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. I...
JOYCE CAROL OATES I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you k...
JOYCE CAROL OATES It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your e...
JOYCE CAROL OATES My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one anot...
JOYCE CAROL OATES The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES It isn't the subjects we write about but the seriousness and subtlety of our expression that determi...
JOYCE CAROL OATES Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.
JOYCE CAROL OATES ; so too, her glazed ceramics and her macramé are interchangeable with those executed by her women ...
JOYCE CAROL OATES It's so easy to settle for less than God's best for us because we don't always feel like...
JOYCE MEYER Yes, God does expect us to live holy, consecrated lives. But not even the best of our intentions can...
JOYCE MEYER As a celebrity, you get a certain number of free passes. You're actually in a better position if...
JOYCE BROTHERS There is such a thing as bad publicity.
JOYCE BROTHERS I don't give advice. I can't tell anybody what to do. Instead I say this is what we know abo...
JOYCE BROTHERS I have found in work that you only get back what you put into it, but it does come back gift-wrapped...
JOYCE BROTHERS The topic of trust is an important factor in all matters of the heart - and here's why. Men lie ...
JOYCE BROTHERS Never try to negotiate with anyone after he or she has eaten. People are best persuaded on an empty ...
JOYCE BROTHERS Credit buying is much like being drunk. The buzz happens immediately and gives you a lift... The han...
JOYCE BROTHERS Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can and surely will at times fail. Other vulnerabi...
JOYCE BROTHERS Real intimacy is only possible to the degree that we can be honest about what we are doing and feeli...
JOYCE BROTHERS No matter how love-sick a woman is, she shouldn't take the first pill that comes along.
JOYCE BROTHERS Marriages, like careers, need constant nurturing... the secret of having it all is loving it all.
JOYCE BROTHERS Virginity is such a personal thing. You can't judge anyone on it. A lot of young women feel they...
JOYCE BROTHERS God doesn't do things halfway. He goes all out! When God does something, it's not just barel...
JOYCE MEYER The cynic finds love with the idealist. The rebel with the conformist. The social butterfly with the...
JOYCE BROTHERS A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.
JOYCE MAYNARD We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.
JOYCE MEYER I like stirring things up. I'm on the side of the kids more than I am on the adults. And occasio...
WILLIAM JOYCE I'm sure that everything you do contributes to the sort of novel that you write. A lot of actors...
RACHEL JOYCE Even if we don't believe in church or God, we still believe in things that are bigger than ourse...
RACHEL JOYCE This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over ag...
RACHEL JOYCE In writing about Harold and Maureen with their terrible unspoken secret, and all those people that H...
RACHEL JOYCE My father died in France, and my sisters and I went over with my mum to bring back his body. I remem...
RACHEL JOYCE I like writing people from a slightly sharp angle and then throwing more light on them. I think in l...
RACHEL JOYCE The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It's a relief to get them on ...
RACHEL JOYCE My father had spent years fighting cancer of the head and neck. He had numerous operations, and he w...
RACHEL JOYCE I am not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me, but when friends ask how it feels to be a debut nove...
RACHEL JOYCE I have written stories since I was a child.
RACHEL JOYCE I'm drawn to people who find themselves on the outside of things. I'm moved by that in real ...
RACHEL JOYCE For me, writing is such an escape, and I felt very lucky to have this to run away to.
RACHEL JOYCE I think I'm somebody who takes praise with a very big - probably too big - pinch of salt.
RACHEL JOYCE I think lots of ideas are sometimes in our heads without us quite, you know, knowing it.
RACHEL JOYCE Actors go inside the heads of other people and are not afraid of the complicated places you can find...
RACHEL JOYCE Before I gave birth to Hope, I had a miscarriage. The pain was so enormous, I had to write myself ou...
RACHEL JOYCE I went through a stage of writing my cramped hand in tiny books. My two sisters and I did have our B...
RACHEL JOYCE I went to see Dad in hospital after he had gone through one particularly grueling operation. I walke...
RACHEL JOYCE We are quick to stick labels on others - especially those who don't fit in with the norm. 'H...
RACHEL JOYCE I think of myself as a very ordinary person. I like writing about the juxtaposition between people: ...
RACHEL JOYCE My dad was always busy. You would pop round for a cup of tea, and within minutes you would see him w...
RACHEL JOYCE I find that very appealing: the blurring of the lines between what's funny and what's tragic...
RACHEL JOYCE The story of Harold Fry and his unlikely pilgrimage began as an afternoon play for radio. For many y...
RACHEL JOYCE On television, it's all just shiny, successful people, and so I feel somebody has to wave a flag...
RACHEL JOYCE I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I ...
JOYCE MEYER But maybe it's what the world needs. A little less sense, and a little more faith.
RACHEL JOYCE It was not a life, if lived without love.
RACHEL JOYCE Buy a book in brown paper
From Faber and Faber
To see Annie Liffey trip, tumble and caper. JAMES JOYCE Pageants were a platform for me, and they helped me get to where I am today. You suddenly stop being...
JOYCE GIRAUD Oh, I am such a little piggy. Everyone is always mad at me because I eat so much. They're like, ...
JOYCE GIRAUD I'm petrified of bees because I have an anaphylactic reaction to bees.
JOYCE GIRAUD My one main secret I did right after my pageants days, is I only wash my hair once a week. I tell ev...
JOYCE GIRAUD I wash my hair once a week. You can do that. I swear. My sister-in-law and all of my friends were li...
JOYCE GIRAUD I'm working with UNESCO on a project called 'Thirst,' which educates children all over C...
JOYCE GIRAUD Pageants were an amazing platform that gave a little girl like me from the mountains of my beautiful...
JOYCE GIRAUD In the entirety of my life, I have never had an eating disorder.
JOYCE GIRAUD I admire the Shabbat tradition, and no matter which faith you are of, there is nothing more wonderfu...
JOYCE GIRAUD I do an international beauty pageant called Queen of the Universe for UNESCO, and what we do is we b...
JOYCE GIRAUD I was very skinny and very lanky and kind of awkward. In Puerto Rico, everybody is a little more vol...
JOYCE GIRAUD