Top 135 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

The cleaning is something I use as a reward if I get some work done. I go into a very happy state of mind when I'm vacuuming.

I would suggest the widow do things the husband used to do, so he seems to be there with you. You will feel like just going to bed. It's so wonderful, going to bed.

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.

Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse.

A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.

You need so much energy and encouragement to write that if someone says something negative, some of that energy goes.

I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.