Quotes from Joyce Carol Oates

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall apart.

Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.

A daydreamer is prepared for most things.

The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming.

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

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.

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?

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

If my favorite, most comfortable place is by our fireplace in cold weather, expedient places are on an airplane, in a waiting room or even waiting in line; frequently these days, while on the phone having been 'put on hold.'

People have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists into their lives, into their physical houses and sort of live with portions of them. But they're not really deeply engaging with them.

It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim.

Sometimes I read reviews, and without exception I will read critical essays that are sent to me. The critical essays are interesting on their own terms.

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

What does it mean to be born? After we die, will it be the same thing as it was before we were born? Or a different kind of nothingness? Because there might be knowledge then. Memory.

Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse.

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.'

Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.

If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

Where we come from in America no longer signifies. It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.

Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside.

Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.