Joyce Carol Oates Trying Quotations

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

I don't teach literature from my perspective as 'Joyce Carol Oates.' I try to teach fiction from the perspective of each writer. If I'm teaching a story by Hemingway, my endeavor is to present the story that Hemingway wrote in its fullest realization.

And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.

The mysteries of the female sex! We men can never hope to fathom your depths, but only try not to drown in them.

If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything.