Quotes on Life and Literature by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer (16th June 1938) whose first book was published in 1962. Through the years Oates has published over forty novels, plays and novellas and many volumes of short stories, poetry and nonfiction too.

Oates is one of the most celebrated American authors of our time and has won many awards including the National Book Award for her novel Them (US – UK), two O. Henry Awards and the National Humanities Medal. She has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize six times.

Born in Stockport, NY and the eldest of three children, Oates was interested in reading and literature from an early age and remembers one of her first books as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which she says had a profound literary influence on her life. In her teens she devoured the writings of Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Hemingway and others, who she says have influenced her writing style throughout her career.

Today we’re looking at Joyce Carol Oates through her most memorable quotes:

“I never change, I simply become more myself.”

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.”

“Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.”

“And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo – that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.”

“Novels begin, not on the page, but in meditation and day-dreaming – In thinking, not writing.”

“It’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.”

“The mere passage of time makes us all exiles.”

“Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.”