In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.
Joyce Carol OatesWe are all regionalists in our origins, however 'universal' our themes and characters, and without our cherished hometowns and childhood landscapes to nourish us, we would be like plants set in shallow soil. Our souls must take root - almost literally.
Joyce Carol OatesI've always been interested in writing about people, including young children who are not able to speak for themselves. As in my novel 'Black Water,' I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.
Joyce Carol OatesOf course, both [Oscar] Wilde & [Vladimir] Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly - for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.)
Joyce Carol Oates