Joyce Carol Oates: Trending quotes (page 3)

“Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.”

“We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves,
unable to see that here, now,
this very moment is sacred;
but once it’s gone –
its value is incontestable.”

“Beauty is a question of optics. All sight is illusion.”

“… such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.”

“I'm drawn to failure. I feel that I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.”

“For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.”

“Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.”

“There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.”

“Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.”

“A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope?”

“… there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.”

“Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.”

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

“I love insult, it's always honest.”

“I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.”

“The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.”

“In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.”

“If I’m required to identify myself on a form, I write “teacher.” I’ve been a teacher almost as long as I’ve been writing. [Pause. ] I think of myself less as a writer than as a person who writes — or tries to. Each morning is a kind of obstacle course in which the obstacles seem to have all the advantage.”

“Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort — these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work.”