Joyce Carol Oates

Birthday: 16 June 1938, Lockport, New York, USA

Height: 173 cm

Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York, USA. She is a writer, known for Foxfire (1996), Smooth Talk (1985) and Foxfire (2012). She has been married to Charles Gross since March 2009. She was previously married to Raymond Smith.

I'm drawn to failure. I feel like I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.

[on time] Surpassingly lovely, precious days. What is there to say except: here they are. Sifting th...Show more »

[on time] Surpassingly lovely, precious days. What is there to say except: here they are. Sifting through my fingers like sand. Show less «

[on desire] In love there are two things: bodies and words.

[on spirit] How reluctant the world is to grant complexity in us...how reluctant we all are. Though ...Show more »

[on spirit] How reluctant the world is to grant complexity in us...how reluctant we all are. Though knowing ourselves mysterious, subtle, complex, self-contradictory. Show less «

[on art] We are stimulated to emotional response not by works that confirm our sense of the world, b...Show more »

[on art] We are stimulated to emotional response not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it. Show less «

[on self-respect] We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this...Show more »

[on self-respect] We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it's gone--its value is incontestable. Show less «

[on having children] No, I don't think so, but then I was never strongly maternal. My brother also d...Show more »

[on having children] No, I don't think so, but then I was never strongly maternal. My brother also doesn't have children, it could be genetic, but it could be that I was so very interested in writing that I just didn't have time, although I do like children. My role models were childless: Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës. Show less «

I am concerned with only one thing, the moral and social conditions of my generation.

[on not having an assistant] No, I'm too shy to hire anyone. I couldn't bear the thought of it. I re...Show more »

[on not having an assistant] No, I'm too shy to hire anyone. I couldn't bear the thought of it. I remember Margaret Drabble saying that it was really hard for her to hire a cleaning woman because it seemed like hiring her own mother. We're from a background where we did the cleaning ourselves. Show less «