Joyce Carol Oates quote: "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."

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

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

Love is just like the flower; it has hidden depths that we rarely ever explore. Beneath the surface ...
CAROL OATES

Sebastian tapped his index finger on the polished wood thoughtfully. Yes, it was a universal truth: ...
CAROL OATES

A broken heart is something even I can’t protect you from. I’ve been alone for so long, and beli...
CAROL OATES

I got ahead from the first rapid, and then just put my head down. I never saw any of he other girls ...
CAROL JOYCE

We wanted to come because it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
CAROL JOYCE

I can't be a hypocrite as a coach because as a player that's what I wanted. I wanted feedbac...
ADAM OATES

The bricks and mortar of the music business, they don't exist any longer.
JOHN OATES

Assistant coaches become a little bit more buddies to the players than a head coach.
ADAM OATES

I was 19 years old, pumping gas and going nowhere. I was kind of a high school dropout at that point...
ADAM OATES

You eat and sleep it all day long and play on the streets until mom calls you in. My story is no dif...
ADAM OATES

Even the superstars need to be coached once in awhile.
ADAM OATES

I went to the Hall of Fame with my dad. I can't say I really remember too much about it.
ADAM OATES

Growing up as a kid my father was British and a soccer player. His idol was a guy that passed the ba...
ADAM OATES

I was a punk. I think that's why I'm such a good person now, because I was such a bad guy th...
ADAM OATES

I am just going outside and may be some time.
LAWRENCE OATES

When albums gave way to CDs, people re-discovered their collection through their CDs.
JOHN OATES

I have a lot of friends who are involved in everything from Americana to blues to R&B to pop to ...
JOHN OATES

Americana Music is about all sorts of different music. It's very free and open: a world where pe...
JOHN OATES

In our relationship, we don't have that situation. I don't require what he needs, and he doe...
JOHN OATES

I have a great family, I live an amazing life.
JOHN OATES

To me, when a great band is playing together, it's amazing for me.
JOHN OATES

You may be embarrassed about the way you looked and the wacky clothes you wore when you were young, ...
JOHN OATES

'Maneater' is about N.Y.C. in the '80s. It's about greed, avarice, and spoiled riche...
JOHN OATES

If you look over the years, the styles have changed - the clothes, the hair, the production, the app...
JOHN OATES

When I graduated from college in the spring of 1970, I decided to hitchhike around Europe with my gu...
JOHN OATES

I've been asked to do various types of cruises.
JOHN OATES

Having a mustache and never smiling became a permanent component of my persona through the quaintly ...
JOHN OATES

My mustache has become this weird iconic representation of a certain era.
JOHN OATES

I couldn't wait to grow a mustache. I stopped shaving my upper lip the day I graduated from high...
JOHN OATES

The key, I think, from a business point of view, is to learn how to be efficient in making a record ...
JOHN OATES

I think people were just starving for good material because they just weren't getting it on the ...
JOHN OATES

I think in music and a lot of creative fields, people's egos get in the way of their ability of ...
JOHN OATES

Jam Cruise is actually a comfortable place for me. My jamming skills and my improvisational skills h...
JOHN OATES

You don't want to pitch a tent and live inside the Louvre. You want to check it out, appreciate ...
JOHN OATES

I'm a bit more grounded than Daryl. I'm more practical, more pragmatic. Daryl looks more at the crea...
JOHN OATES

Swimming upstream in the music business is a hard thing to do.
JOHN OATES

My guitar playing is a synthesis of traditional American acoustic style and Urban Pop and R&B.
JOHN OATES

I don't care if it's a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton J...
JOHN OATES

Sometimes, it's just great to bring new people into the mix.
JOHN OATES

A good mustache makes a man for many reasons.
JOHN OATES

There's always a personal satisfaction in writing a song by yourself. You get the inspiration, a...
JOHN OATES

If anyone looks back to the '70s, '80s with nostalgic rosy colored glasses and goes, 'We...
JOHN OATES

Dick Clark's 'American Bandstand' spread the gospel of American pop music and teenage st...
JOHN OATES

I have such a wide variety of tastes in things that I like musically.
JOHN OATES

The mustache represented the old John; I didn't want to be that guy anymore, so I shaved it off....
JOHN OATES

I realized if I'm not really making an album, I don't have to be concerned about things like...
JOHN OATES

He would be overjoyed. To see the outpouring of love from the fans, the former players and the Range...
GLORIA OATES

This is just a very strong testimony to the life Johnny lead.
GLORIA OATES

It's absolutely awesome the turnout that we've had here. Friends from as far back as high school and...
GLORIA OATES

I am just going outside and may be some time.
CAPTAIN LAWRENCE OATES

This was a one-on-one encounter between an officer and a violent felon. And there's no question that...
CHIEF DANIEL 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

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.

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Joyce Carol Oates

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.

Joyce Carol Oates

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