Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

—Joyce Carol Oates

darkness desert night

About Joyce Carol Oates

Portrait of Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and...

More quotations from Joyce Carol Oates

Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad—I could not bear to "outlive" them—for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.

—Joyce Carol Oates in A Widow's Story

love relationship parents Mom dad

People come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be.

—Joyce Carol Oates in and Flew Away

life people reason

The experience is there, the reality is there, but how to get at it? Everything I type turns into a lie simply because it is not the truth.

—Joyce Carol Oates

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

—Joyce Carol Oates

life reality violence

A daydreamer is prepared for most things.

—Joyce Carol Oates

imagination preparation daydreaming

More quotations tagged with “night”

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.

—Steven Wright

humor night cards poker

Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

life music moon night

For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.

—Mignon McLaughlin

life chance happiness serendipity night daytime

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the bloody night, or when you're half awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is.

writing music letting go sleep night

The day, water, sun, moon, night—I do not have to purchase these things with money.

money sun moon water night invaluable

History

31 Jan 2015 Added