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The Other Book That I Worry No One Reads Anymore Is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's Not Easy, But Every Page Is Wonderful And Repays The Effort. I Started Reading It In High School, But I Wasn't Really Able To Grasp It. Then I Read It In College. I Once Spent Six Weeks In A Graduate Seminar Reading It. It Takes That Long. That's The Problem. No One Reads That Way Anymore. People May Spend A Week With A Book, But Not Six.

-Joyce Carol Oates

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The Other Book That

Joyce Carol Oates

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The Other Book That I Worry No One Reads Anymore Is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's Not Easy, But Every Page Is Wonderful And Repays The Effort. I Started Reading It In High School, But I Wasn't Really Able To Grasp It. Then I Read It In College. I Once Spent Six Weeks In A Graduate Seminar Reading It. It Takes That Long. That's The Problem. No One Reads That Way Anymore. People May Spend A Week With A Book, But Not Six.

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Honor And Respect

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A Typical Biography Relying Upon Individuals' Notorious Memories And The Anecdotes They've Invented Contains A High Degree Of Fiction, Yet Is Considered 'nonfiction.'

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The American Dream Is A Multi-metaphor Made Up Of Distinct Regions. Many Regions Of This Country Are Almost Like Different Countries. Even In One State, Northern And Southern California Are Like Two Separate Countries.

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

This Is My Life Now. Absurd, But Unpredictable. Not Absurd Because Unpredictable But Unpredictable Because Absurd. If I Have Lost The Meaning Of My Life, I Might Still Find Small Treasured Things Among The Spilled And Pilfered Trash.

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Food Doesn't Exist, But Can Only Be Invented. And Reinvented.

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The Suicide Does Not Play The Game, Does Not Observe The Rules. He Leaves The Party Too Soon, And Leaves The Other Guests Painfully Uncomfortable.

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

I Can't Imagine A Mental Life, A Spiritual Existence, Not Inextricably Bound Up With Language Of A Formal, Mediated Nature. Telling Stories, Choosing An Appropriate Language With Which To Tell The Story: This Seems To Me Quintessentially Human, One Of The Great Adventures Of Our Species.

Why The Need, Rising In Some Very Nearly To The Level Of Compulsion, To Verify Experience By Way Of Language?-to Scrupulously Record And Preserve The Very Passing Of Time?

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.

Most People Who Are Writers Go Through Periods When They Can't Write.

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Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

In A Family, What Isn't Spoken Is What You Listen For. But The Noise Of A Family Is To Drown It Out.

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The Use Of Language Is All We Have To Pit Against Death And Silence.

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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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Boxing Has Become America's Tragic Theater.

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.

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.

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Childhood Is The Province Of The Imagination And When I Immerse Myself In It, I Re-create It As It Was, As It Could Have Been, As I Wanted - And Didn't Want - It To Be.

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.

The Secret Of Being A Writer: Not To Expect Others To Value What You've Done As You Value It. Not To Expect Anyone Else To Perceive In It The Emotions You Have Invested In It. Once This Is Understood, All Will Be Well.

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The Worst Cynicism: A Belief In Luck.

Perhaps The Inevitable Tragedy Of Our Complex Civilization Is That We Must Be Specialists In Our Fields - And Our Fields Have Become Increasingly Difficult, So That Communication Is Nearly Impossible.

I Remember Once Asking Grandma About A Book She Was Reading, A Biography Of Abraham Lincoln, And How She Answered Me: This Was The First Conversation Of My Life That Concerned A Book, And 'the Life Of The Mind' - And Now, Such Subjects Have Become My Life.

While There Are 'women Writers' There Are Not, And Have Never Been, 'men Writers.' This Is An Empty Category, A Class Without Specimens; For The Noun 'writer' - The Very Verb 'writing' - Always Implies Masculinity.

It's Rare That We Actively And Consciously 'forget'; Most Of The Time We Have Simply Forgotten, With No Consciousness Of Having Forgotten. In Individuals, The Phenomenon Is Called 'denial'; In Entire Cultures And Nations, It's Usually Called 'history.

I Have Read On A Kindle. But The Kindle We Had Only Worked For About Eight Months Then It Stopped Working. You Don't Have To Get Books Repaired.

Alone, She Took Hot Baths And Sat Exhausted In The Steaming Water, Wondering At Her Perpetual Exhaustion. All That Winter She Noticed The Limp, Languid Weight Of Her Arms, Her Veins Bulging Slightly With The Pressure Of Her Extreme Weariness ... One Day In January She Drew A Razor Blade Lightly Across The Inside Of Her Arm, Near The Elbow, To See What Would Happen.

How Lovely This World Is, Really: One Simply Has To Look.

It's Hard To Say How We Compare To Other People. We Each Inhabit Our Own Personalities. I Have Often Felt That I'm A Very Neutral Being And That I Have Almost No Personality. I'm Drawn To Writing Partly Because I'm Fascinated By The Mimetic Process.

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I Was Trying Not To Be Happy, Hopeful. I Did Not Believe I Deserved Happiness Or Even Hope, If You Knew My Soul.

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We 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.

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The Great Happiness In Life In Creativity Belongs To Amateurs.

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Primarily, 'black Girl/white Girl' Is The Story Of Two Very Different, Yet Somehow 'fated' Girls; For Genna, Her 'friendship' With Minette Is The Most Haunting Of Her Life, Though It Is One-sided And Ends In Tragedy.

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

What Does It Mean To Be Born? After We Die, Will It Be The Same Thing As It Was Before We Were Born? Or A Different Kind Of Nothingness? Because There Might Be Knowledge Then. Memory.

She Wasn't In Love But She Would Love Him, If That Would Save Her.

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

Running! If There's Any Activity Happier, More Exhilarating, More Nourishing To The Imagination, I Can't Think Of What It Might Be.

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

I Work Very Slowly. It's Like Building A Ladder, Where You're Building Your Own Ladder Rung By Rung, And You're Climbing The Ladder. It's Not The Best Way To Build A Ladder, But I Don't Know Any Other Way.

'we Were The Mulvaneys' Is Perhaps The Novel Closest To My Heart. I Think Of It As A Valentine To A Passing Way Of American Life, And To My Own Particular Child - And Girlhood In Upstate New York. Everyone In The Novel Is Enormously Close To Me, Including Marianne's Cat, Muffin, Who Was In Fact My Own Cat.

Art Is About Freedom Of Expression, And Should Not Be Molded To Fit Any Propaganda Or Lofty Ideal.

The Best Revenge Is Living Well Without You.

A Diverse And Lively Collection, The Highest Art Of The Interview.

There Is An Hour, A Minute - You Will Remember It Forever - When You Know Instinctively On The Basis Of The Most Inconsequential Evidence, That Something Is Wrong. You Don't Know - Can't Know - That It Is The First Of A Series Of "wrongful" Events That Will Culminate In The Utter Devastation Of Your Life As You Have Known It.

Literature, Art, Like Civilization Itself, Are Only Accidents.

Among Many Of My Friends And Acquaintances, I Seem To Be One Of The Very Few Individuals Who Felt Or Feels No Ambivalence About My Mother. All My Feelings For My Mother Were Positive, Very Strong And Abiding.

There Is An Hour When You Realize: Here Is What You Have Been Given. More Than This, You Won't Receive. And What This Is, What Your Life Has Come To, Will Be Taken From You. In Time.

When I Complete A Novel I Set It Aside, And Begin Work On Short Stories, And Eventually Another Long Work. When I Complete That Novel I Return To The Earlier Novel And Rewrite Much Of It. In The Meantime The Second Novel Lies In A Desk Drawer.

The Strangeness Of Time. Not In Its Passing, Which Can Seem Infinite, Like A Tunnel Whose End You Can't See, Whose Beginning You've Forgotten, But In The Sudden Realization That Something Finite, Has Passed, And Is Irretrievable.

I Tend To Think In Dramatic Terms. In Life, There May Be An Actual Drama, But It Would Be The Fictionalized, Imagined Drama That Engaged Me.

Writing Allows For Fictitious Voices - The Voices Of Persons Unlike Myself - That Might Otherwise Be Muted.

Getting The First Draft Finished Is Like Pushing A Peanut With Your Nose Across A Very Dirty Floor.

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Margaret Bourke-White

H. P. Blavatsky

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