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Joyce Carol Oates Biography

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1962 and has since published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), Blonde (2000), and short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

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Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

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

Broken Heart, Love You, Making Love, Everyone, Make, Love

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.

Drawing, Five, Grandmother, Novel, Writing

I never change, I simply become more myself.

Become, Change, Never Change, Simply

When I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family life and the lies of certain individuals close to me, with the detachment of time. I wanted to tell the truth about secrets: How much pain they give, yet how much relief, even happiness we may feel when at last the motive for secrecy has passed.

Close, Giving, Individuals, Lying, Old, Pain

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.

Different, Doe, Kind, Knowledge, Mean, Memories

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

Atheism, Authority, Forgets, Humility, Invest, Passion

Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.

Except, Reading, Thinking, Wish, Writing

When I'm really involved or getting towards the end of a novel, I can write for up to ten hours a day. At those times, it's as though I'm writing a letter to someone I'm desperately in love with.

Day, Desperately, Hours, Letters, Writing

How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?

Doe, Form, Forms, Poet, Stunning, Thoughts

Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding.

Feelings, Friends, Individuals, Mother, Strong

I am what would be called a 'mainstream feminist,' not a radical feminist.

Feminist, Mainstream, Radical, Would Be

My first love was reading, which inspired me to write.

First Love, Inspired, Reading, Write, Writing

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

Appear, Editors, Remember, Writing

The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.

Eye, Looking, Reading, Spiritual, Time

Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.

Blessing, Book, Buy, Giving, Know

Ambitious, absorbing, and poignantly moving.

Absorbing, Ambitious, Moving, Poignantly

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

Commingled, Hate, Love Or Hate, Powerful

This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just didn't pick up the phone.

Easier, Mail, Phone, Phones, Voice

Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct?

America, Athlete, Culture, Sports, Tyson

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.

Belief, Cynicism, Luck, Work, Worst

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