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It Makes Me Angry Sometimes, It's A Visceral Thing--how You Come To Despise Your Own Words In Your Ears Not Because They Aren't Genuine, But Because They Are; Because You've Said Them So Many Times, Your 'principles,' Your 'ideals'--and So Damned Little In The World Has Changed Because Of Them.

-Joyce Carol Oates

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It Makes Me Angry

Joyce Carol Oates

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It Makes Me Angry Sometimes, It's A Visceral Thing--how You Come To Despise Your Own Words In Your Ears Not Because They Aren't Genuine, But Because They Are; Because You've Said Them So Many Times, Your 'principles,' Your 'ideals'--and So Damned Little In The World Has Changed Because Of Them.

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How Does The Poet Transform His Banal Thoughts (are Not Most Thoughts Banal?) Into Such Stunning Forms, Into Beauty?

I Think What Distresses Me Most In My Life Is That I Have So Many Ideas I Consider Exciting Ideas That I Will Never Live To Execute Because It Takes Me So Long To Execute.

I Compose Most Of My Tweets With Care, As If They Were Aphorisms - They Are Not Usually Dashed-off. Sometimes I'm Surprised By The High, Poetic Quality Of Twitter - It Lends Itself To A Surreal Sort Of Self-expression.

Sometimes People Surprise Us. People We Believe We Know.

Self-criticism Is An Art Not Many Are Qualified To Practice.

Impossible Not To Imagine The Dead Observing Us. Our Love For Them A Soft, Shimmering Gossamar That Trails Behind Us.

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

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

My Parents Inspired Me By Their Example. They Both Grew Up In The Depression, And Both Of Them Had To Quit School When They Were Quite Young To Work, Because There Actually Was No Choice. So They've Always Impressed Me With Their Resilience, Their Good Spirits, Their Courage. I Just Remember Them Carrying On And Just Doing Their Lives. They Really Made A Strong Impression On Me.

I 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.

Like Most People, I Can Be Very Easily Hurt.

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.

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.

It's Always A Challenge To Discover The Most Effective First Sentence, And The Most Effective Final Sentence, In A Chapter For Instance, And In The Book As A Whole.

When Writing Goes Painfully, When It’s Hideously Difficult, And One Feels Real Despair (ah, The Despair, Silly As It Is, Is Real!)–then Naturally One Ought To Continue With The Work; It Would Be Cowardly To Retreat. But When Writing Goes Smoothly–why Then One Certainly Should Keep On Working, Since It Would Be Stupid To Stop. Consequently One Is Always Writing Or Should Be Writing.

The Greatest Realities Are Physical And Economic, All The Subtleties Of Life Come Afterward.

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.

To Write A Novel Is To Embark On A Quest That Is Very Romantic. People Have Visions, And The Next Step Is To Execute Them. That's A Very Romantic Project. Like Edvard Munch's Strange Dreamlike Canvases Where People Are Stylized, Like 'the Scream.' Munch Must Have Had That Vision In A Dream, He Never Saw It.

Later, Her First Intense, Serious Love Affair, Yes Then She'd Lost Something More Tangible, If Undefinable: Her Heart? Her Independence? Her Control Of, Definition Of, Self? That First True Loss, The Furious Bafflement Of It. And Never Again Quite So Assured, Confident.

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.

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.

Yes, 'black Girl/white Girl' Might Be Described As A 'coming-of-age' Novel, At Least For The Survivor Genna. It Is Also Intended As A Comment On Race Relations In America More Generally: We Are 'roommates' With One Another, But How Well Do We Know One Another?

I Had Forgotten That Time Wasn't Fixed Like Concrete But In Fact Was Fluid As Sand, Or Water. I Had Forgotten That Even Misery Can End.

It's A Taboo Subject. How The Dead Are Betrayed By The Living. We Who Are Living--we Who Have Survived--understand That Our Guilt Is What Links Us To The Dead. At All Times We Can Hear Them Calling To Us, A Growing Incredulity In Their Voices, You Will Not Forget Me -- Will You? How Can You Forget Me? I Have No One But You.

I Do What I Want To Do. It Was A Brash Statement Of(her)girlhood. Now She Was An Adult, The Boast Seemed Quaint. For Rarely Do You Know What You Want. Even After You've Done It You Can't Say Clearly If That Was What You'd Wanted Or Just Something That Happened To You, Like Weather.

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.

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