Quotes from Joyce Carol Oates

I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.

Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write.

I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all.

The most common misperception about me is that I write fast. I just write often. Every hour that I can.

It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.

I am more or less reading all the time.

And what is 'art'? - a firestorm rushing through Time, arising from no visible source and conforming to no principles of logic or causality.

After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.

Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?

Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.

I used to think getting old was about vanity but actually it's about losing people you love.

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

Like most people, I can be very easily hurt.

I've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel 'Black Water,' I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.

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.

Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: 'Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors.' Everyone knows this.

Criticism is, for me, like essay writing, a wonderful way of relaxation; it doesn't require a heightened and mediated voice, like prose fiction, but rather a calm, rational, even conversational voice.

I was brought up to be sympathetic toward others.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

Maybe, love is always forgiveness, to a degree.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

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.

The first sentence can't be written until the final sentence is written.

What is a family, after all, except memories?–haphazard and precious as the contents of a catchall drawer in the kitchen.