To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.
Joyce Carol OatesIt's impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James - and many more - without wanting to write, however entirely different one's writing will be.
Joyce Carol OatesI 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