Joyce Carol Oates

Death is just the last scene of the last act. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#death #death

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#hope #optimism #pessimism #pragmatism #worst

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#on-fiction #writing #life

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#art #complexity #writing #art

A mouth of no distinction but well practiced, before I entered my teens, in irony. For what is irony but the repository of hurt? And what is hurt but the repository of hope? ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#hurt #irony #teen

I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#on-writing #pseudonym #freedom

The denial of language is a suicidal one and we pay for it with our own lives. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#writing #communication

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain? ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#happiness #family

. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#rape-a-love-story #truth #willful-ignorance #love

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food? ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#food #poetry