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For The First Time Driving That Day I Could Feel The Motion Of The Earth. The Earth Rushing Through The Emptiness Of Space. Spinning On Its Axis But They Say You Don't Feel It, You Can't Experience It. But To Feel It Is To Be Scared And Happy At Once And To Know That Nothing Matters But That You Do What You Want To Do And What You Do You Are. And I Knew I Was Moving Into The Future. There Is Not Past Anybody Can Get To, To Alter Things Or Ever To Know What Those Things Were But There Is Definitely A Future, We Are Already In It.

-Joyce Carol Oates

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For The First Time

Joyce Carol Oates

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For The First Time Driving That Day I Could Feel The Motion Of The Earth. The Earth Rushing Through The Emptiness Of Space. Spinning On Its Axis But They Say You Don't Feel It, You Can't Experience It. But To Feel It Is To Be Scared And Happy At Once And To Know That Nothing Matters But That You Do What You Want To Do And What You Do You Are. And I Knew I Was Moving Into The Future. There Is Not Past Anybody Can Get To, To Alter Things Or Ever To Know What Those Things Were But There Is Definitely A Future, We Are Already In It.

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I Would Suggest The Widow Do Things The Husband Used To Do, So He Seems To Be There With You. You Will Feel Like Just Going To Bed. It's So Wonderful, Going To Bed.

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The First Sentence Cant Be Written Until The Final Sentence Is Written.

We Come Away From The Tragedies Of [william] Shakespeare With A Profound Sense Of Having Encountered Reality In Its Most Pristine Form - Yet The Art-work Is Elaborately Artificial, The Very Genre Of Tragedy In Poetry An Anti-naturalist Perspective.

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Serious Subjects

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Of The Widow's Countless Death-duties There Is Really Just One That Matters: On The First Anniversary Of Her Husband's Death The Widow Should Think I Kept Myself Alive.

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Every Scar In My Face Is Worth It.

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Unrequited Love

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Having Patience

Better To Be Despised, Then, Than To Be Ignored; Or Damned With Condescending Praise.

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I Feel A Terrible Loss When I (eventually Must) Complete A Work Of Fiction.

Writing! The Activity For Which The Only Adequate Bribe Is The Possibility Of Suicide, One Day.

I Rarely Write In My Own Voice Except In Book Reviews And Memoirs; Otherwise, I Am Writing In Mediated Voices, Modulated In Terms Of The Characters Whom The Voices Express.

Yet I Will Make You All Love Me And I Will Punish Myself To Spite Your Love.

It's Not Hard To Write Poorly. But To Write Something Good, It Has To Be Revised.

Productivity Is A Relative Matter. And It's Really Insignificant: What Is Ultimately Important Is A Writer's Strongest Books.

Though I Revise Constantly As I Write, I Will Usually Revise Much Of The Work Again After I've Reached The Ending.

My Writing Is Full Of Lives I Might Have Led.

Much In Our Lives Is Chance.

We Are Linked By Blood, And Blood Is Memory Without Language.

Her Wish To Die Was As Pervasive As A Dial Tone: You Lift The Receiver, It's Always There.

Each Time I Undertake To Reread Virginia Woolf, I Am Somewhat Baffled By The Signature Breathlessness And Relentlessly "poetic" Tone, The Shimmering Impressionism, So Very Different From The Vivid, Precise, Magisterial (and Often Very Funny) Prose Of Her Contemporary James Joyce.

For What Are The Words With Which To Summarize A Lifetime, So Much Crowded Confused Happiness Terminated By Such Stark Slow-motion Pain?

America Is A Very Religious Nation. Not A Mono-religious Nation Because There Are Many Different Strands Of Belief, But There's Something About This Nation That Inspires People, Or Perhaps Draws People, Who Are Strongly Idealistic.

Prose-it Might Be Speculated-is Discourse; Poetry Ellipsis. Prose Is Spoken Aloud; Poetry Overheard. The One Is Presumably Articulate And Social, A Shared Language, The Voice Of "communication"; The Other Is Private, Allusive, Teasing, Sly, Idiosyncratic As The Spider's Delicate Web, A Kind Of Witchcraft Unfathomable To Ordinary Minds.

Keep A Light, Hopeful Heart. But expect The Worst.

All That Matters In Life Is Forging Deep Ties Of Love And Family And Friends. Writing And Reading Come Later.

By The Way Of Connecting With Subject, With Theme, I Was Able To Find A Kind Of Lifeline. Writing's Like A Lifeline. You Have To Get The Right Way In. Otherwise The Material Just Lies There, And You Can't Do Anything With It.

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You're An Insomniac, You Tell Yourself: There Are Profound Truths Revealed Only To The Insomniac By Night Like Those Phosphorescent Minerals Veined And Glimmering In The Dark But Coarse And Ordinary Otherwise; You Have To Examine Such Minerals In The Absence Of Light To Discover Their Beauty, You Tell Yourself.

In No Other Sport Is The Connection Between Performer And Observer So Intimate, So Frequently Painful, So Unresolved

The Ideal Art, The Noblest Of Art: Working With The Complexities Of Life, Refusing To Simplify, To "overcome" Doubt.

Only In Love Is There Trust - Even The Possibility Of Trust.

I Can Entertain The Proposition That Life Is A Metaphor For Boxing--for One Of Those Bouts That Go On And On, Round Following Round, Jabs, Missed Punches, Clinches, Nothing Determined, Again The Bell And Again And You And Your Opponent So Evenly Matched It's Impossible Not To See That Your Opponent Is You.... Life Is Like Boxing In Many Unsettling Respects. But Boxing Is Only Like Boxing.

There Should Really Not Be Anything Gratuitous In A Work Of Art. Sometimes What Seems As If It's Gratuitous May Be A Passage In Which A Character Is Being Characterized So That The Reader Comes To Know Him Or Her Better.

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Honorary Degrees And Lifetime Achievement Awards Are Very Encouraging. I Know That It Might Sound Strange That A Writer Who Has Published Many Books Still Needs Encouragement, But This Is True.

Fame's Carapace Does Not Allow For Easy Breathing.

Only When You Have Completed A Novel, Or A Story, Can You Return To The Beginning And Revise Or Rewrite.

Sometimes People Surprise Us. People We Believe We Know.

Much Of My Writing Is Energized By Unresolved Memories - Something Like Ghosts In The Psychological Sense.

One Of Life's Minor Satisfactions Is Forgetting.

The Domestic Lives We Live - Which May Be Accidental, Or Not Entirely Of Our Making - Help To Make Possible Our Writing Lives; Our Imaginations Are Freed, Or Stimulated, By The Very Prospect Of Companionship, Quiet, A Predictable And Consoling Routine.

Read Widely, And Without Apology. Read What You Want To Read, Not What Someone Tells You You Should Read.

The Cleaning Is Something I Use As A Reward If I Get Some Work Done. I Go Into A Very Happy State Of Mind When I'm Vacuuming.

The Folly Of War Is That It Can Have No Natural End Except In The Extinction An Entire People.

Celebrate While You Can

Before I Undertake A Lengthy Project, I Have Usually Given Much Thought To It Over A Period Of Years. My Files Are Filled With Likely Subjects - Which Perhaps, One Day, I Will Develop.

Any Writer Who Has Difficulty In Writing Is Probably Not Onto His True Subject, But Wasting Time With False, Petty Goals; As Soon As You Connect With Your True Subject You Will Write.

My Own Way Of Writing Is Very Meditated And, Despite My Reputation, Rather Slow-moving. So I Do Spend A Good Deal Of Time Contemplating Endings. The Final Ending Is Usually Arrived At Simply By Intuition.

For Some Reason, Voters Can Be Brainwashed, And They Vote Sometimes Against Their Own Best Interests, Let Alone Voting Against The Interests Of People Who Need Them, Like People Who Are Disenfranchised And People Who Are Poor And So Forth.

God's Blessing Is Not Always To Be Distinguished From His Wrath.

I Can't Say I Was A Very Successful Sorority Girl.

For Madness Must Be Punished In A World In Which Mere Sanity Is Prized. The Revenge Of The Ordinary Upon The Gifted.

Yes, I've Listened To Just A Few Audiobooks - But Hope To Listen To More. I've Wanted To Investigate How My Own Books Sound In This Format And Find The Experience Of Listening, And Not Reading, Quite Fascinating.

You Wake Up One Morning, Those Years Are Gone. There's A Comfort In This Fact Perhaps. I Want To Think That There Must Be Comfort In All Facts We Can't Alter.

Whoever's Reading This, If Anyone Is Reading It: Does It Matter That Our Old Selves Are Lost To Us As Surely As The Past Is Lost, Or Is It Enough To Know Yes We Lived Then, And We Are Living Now, And The Connection Must Be There? Like A River Hundreds Of Miles Long Exists Both At Its Source And At Its Mouth, Simultaneously?

When You Give Up Struggle, There's A Kind Of Love.

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.

I Don't Know What Marriages Are Like In General, But There Are Many Things Which I Don't Talk About With My Husband. We Discuss Practical Problems, But I Wouldn't Sit Down With Him And Talk About The Distant Past. It's Somewhat In Contrast To Other Americans, Who Feel That They Have To Confess Things, But I'm Really Not Like That.

Prose-it Might Be Speculated-is Discourse; Poetry Ellipsis. Prose Is Spoken Aloud; Poetry Overheard.

Don't Try To Anticipate An Ideal Reader - Or Any Reader. He/she Might Exist - But Is Reading Someone Else.

Adriana Loved Even The Rank Animal Smell Of The Man's Body, Her Sweat-slicked Breasts And Belly Flattened Beneath Him, And Her Arms And Legs Clutching Him As A Drowning Woman Might Clutch Another Person To Save Her Life. Don't Don't Don't Don't Leave Me. Don't Leave Me. As In Animal Copulation The Frenzy Is To Be Locked Together Not Out Of Sentiment Or Choice But Physical Compulsion. As If Bolts Of Electric Current Ran Through Both Their Bodies And Would Only Release Them From Each Other When It Ceased.

The Historical Woodrow Wilson Suffered From Numerous Complaints Which We Might Today Label As Psychosomatic. Yet, Wilson Did Have A Stroke As A Relatively Young Man Of 39 And Seemed Always To Be Ill. He Was 'high-strung' - Intensely Neurotic - Yet A Charismatic Personality Nonetheless.

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If You Explore Beneath Shyness Or Party Chit-chat, You Can Sometimes Turn A Dull Exchange Into An Intriguing One. I've Found This To Be Particularly True In The Case Of Professors Or Intellectuals, Who Are Full Of Fascinating Information, But Need Encouragement Before They'll Divulge It.

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That's How A Thing Starts Out Real Then Ends Up Just An Idea.

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I'm Sure All That You've Heard Is Just The Usual Gossip, Invented To Injure Feelings Rather Than Illuminate Truth.

I Want To Tell You That I Love You I Want To Tell You That I Love You I Want To Tell You That I Love I Love I Love I Love But You Do Not.

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That Is The Mystery: Reading Henry James Can Yield Prose That Is Contrary To James, Yet Inspired By Him. Who Can Understand This?

There Is The Expectation That A Younger Generation Has The Opportunity To Redeem The Crimes And Failings Of Their Elders And Would Have The Strength And Idealism To Do So.

I Learned Long Ago That Being Lewis Carroll Was Infinitely More Exciting Than Being Alice.

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Boxing Is An American Sport - A 'so-called Sport' To Many - In Which Images Of Incalculable Beauty And Violence, Desperation And Ingenuity, Are Routinely Entwined; The Sport That Evokes The Most Extreme Reactions - Loathing, Revulsion, Righteous Indigation; A Fierce And Often Inexplicable Loyalty.

Cherie, Keep Walking. Shut Your Eyes. We Are Headed For The Bridge. We Are Going To Cross It.

I'm Nobody's Daughter Now. I'm Through With That.

The Worst Cynicism: A Belief In Luck.

Except That Awards Are Competitive, Which Is A Negative Thing, They Are Wonderful For Singling Out Deserving Individuals And Bringing Their Work To The Attention Of Many Potential Readers Who Might Otherwise Have Been Totally Unaware Of Them.

The Music Was Always In The Background, Like Music At A Church Service; It Was Something To Depend Upon.

There Is Something Thrilling In The Mimesis Of Life's Surprising Unfolding.

And That's The Insult Of It, How Always It Comes Back To A Woman Being A "good" Mother In The World's Eyes Or A "bad" Mother, How Everything In A Woman's Life Is Funneled Through Her Body Between Her Legs.

Reading Is The Sole Means By Which We Slip, Involuntarily, Often Helplessly, Into Another's Skin, Another's Voice, Another's Soul.

Just As Our Historical Beginnings Are Utterly Mysterious-why Are We Born? Why When And As We Are?-so Too Are The Beginnings Of Works Of Art And Of "artists.

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As Soon As I Moved To Princeton In 1978, I Became Fascinated By Local History, Much Of It Revolutionary War-era; And I Became Fascinated By The Presidency Of Woodrow Wilson At Princeton University.

Princeton University

Society Is The Picnic Certain Individuals Leave Early, The Party They Fail To Enjoy, The Musical Comedy They Find Not Worth The Price Of Admission.

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When One Crosses Over From An Activity, Or The Verb, Of Writing Or Doing, And Becomes A Noun, Like "a Writer" I Think That Is An Act Of Supreme Self-consciousness That I've Never, In Effect, Made. I Write, But I Don't Like To Think Of Myself As A Writer. I Think It's Somewhat Self-aggrandizing And Pretentious. Now, I Am A Teacher.

Early Publication Can Be A Dubious Blessing: We All Know Writers Who Would Give Anything Not To Have Published Their First Book, And Go About Trying To Buy Up All Existing Copies.

Henry David Thoreau Is Very Independent-minded, Very Iconoclastic, And Had Quite A Corrosive Sense Of Humor. I Think That I Probably Have Grown Up To Have A Thoreauvian Perspective On Many Things. Though In Other Ways I Live A Life He Would Not Have Approved Of. He Believed To Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. Make Your Life Very Clear And Plain And Meditative And Not Confused. Sometimes My Life, In Fact, Is Confused.

Homo Sapiens Is The Species That Invents Symbols In Which To Invest Passion And Authority, Then Forgets That Symbols Are Inventions.

To Be True To Life, A Novel Must Have An Ending That Is Inevitable Given The Specific Personalities Of The Characters Involved. The Novelist Must Not Impose An Ending Upon Them.

I Really Love To Set Things In Places That Are Real To Me.

Acting Is The Loneliest Profession I Know.

Keeing Busy" Is The Remedy For All The Ills In America. It's Also The Means By Which The Creative Impulse Is Destroyed.

For The First Time Driving That Day I Could Feel The Motion Of The Earth. The Earth Rushing Through The Emptiness Of Space. Spinning On Its Axis But They Say You Don't Feel It, You Can't Experience It. But To Feel It Is To Be Scared And Happy At Once And To Know That Nothing Matters But That You Do What You Want To Do And What You Do You Are. And I Knew I Was Moving Into The Future. There Is Not Past Anybody Can Get To, To Alter Things Or Ever To Know What Those Things Were But There Is Definitely A Future, We Are Already In It.

The Body Can't Distinguish Between Cleansing And Punishing For The Body Is Ignorant, And Mute Besides.

Very Few Writers Of Distinction In Fact Were Outstanding As Undergraduates.

Boxing Has Become America's Tragic Theater.

Never Be Ashamed Of Your Subject, And Of Your Passion For Your Subject.

The Heavenly Light You Admire Is Fossil-light, It's The Unfathomably Distant Past You Gaze Into, Stars Long Extinct

I See The World In Ways That Might Be Considered Somewhat Harsh And Darwinistic. At The Same Time Mediated, As In Darwin, By A Real Idealism And An Excitement About The Possibilities Of The Intellect And Imagination To Deal With This Somewhat Brutal World.

If You're Living With A Scientist, You See The World Differently Than You Do With A Humanist. It's In Some Ways Very Subtle, The Differences In Perceiving Reality.

When A Marriage Ends, Who Is Left To Understand It?

Critics Sometimes Appear To Be Addressing Themselves To Works Other Than Those I Remember Writing.

Love Is An Indescribable Sensation - Perhaps A Conviction, A Sense Of Certitude.

I Haven't Any Formal Schedule, But I Love To Write In The Morning, Before Breakfast. Sometimes The Writing Goes So Smoothly That I Don't Take A Break For Many Hours - And Consequently Have Breakfast At Two Or Three In The Afternoon On Good Days.

Language Is The Instrument In All Cases And Can Language Be Trusted?if It Were Not For Language, Could We Lie?

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