Skip to content

When you’re 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity — but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Another quote →

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

Address at Mount Holyoke College (2006)

When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

Prose — it might be speculated — is discourse; poetry ellipsis.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

All Joyce Carol Oates quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Joyce Carol Oates (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.