Joyce carol oates

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

I wrote a novel called 'Blonde,' which is about Norma Jean Baker, who becomes Marilyn Monroe, which I called a fictitious biography. That uses the material as if it were myth - that Marilyn Monroe is...

The domestic lives we live - which may be accidental, or not entirely of our making - help to make possible our writing lives; our imaginations are freed, or stimulated, by the very prospect of...

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.

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...

A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

For some reason, voters can be brainwashed, and they vote sometimes against their own best interests, let alone voting against the interests of people who need them, like people who are...