Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.

If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

Whoever was stupid was beneath worry or thought; you did not have to figure them out. This eliminated hundreds of people. In this life you had time only for a certain amount of thinking, and there was no need to waste any of it on people who were not threatening.

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

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.

A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

[Emily] Dickinson, our supreme poet of inwardness.