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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.

-Joyce Carol Oates

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There Should Really Not

Joyce Carol Oates

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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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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.

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I Did Not Consider That I Would Lead A Literary Life. I'd Thought Initially, As A Young Girl, That I Would Be A Teacher, Since I So Admired Many Of My Teachers. And Though I Loved Writing, I Did Not Ever Think Of Myself As A Writer.

Shakespeare Would Seem To Have Been A Person For Whom The Human Voice/personality In All Its Splendid Idiosyncrasy Was Absolutely Enthralling.

Acting Is The Loneliest Profession I Know.

Boxing Is Rough. Even If You Win, You Get Hurt.

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I Am What Would Be Called A 'mainstream Feminist,' Not A Radical Feminist.

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I Could Eat Your Heart & Asshole You'd Never Know It.

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A Good, Sympathetic Review Is Always A Wonderful Surprise.

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

Art Does The Same Things Dreams Do. We Have A Hunger For Dreams And Art Fulfills That Hunger. So Much Of Real Life Is A Disappointment. That's Why We Have Art.

One Of The Qualities Of Writing That Is Not Much Stressed Is Its Problem-solving Aspect, Having To Do With The Presentation Of Material: How To Structure It, What Sort Of Sentences (direct, Elliptical, Simple Or Compound, Syntactically Elaborate), What Tone (in Art, "tone" Is Everything), Pacing. Paragraphing Is A Way Of Dramatization, As The Look Of A Poem On A Page Is Dramatic; Where To Break Lines, Where To End Sentences.

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My Grandmother Could Never Have Written A Memoir, So 'the Gravedigger's Daughter' Is A Homage To Her Life, And To The Lives Of Other Young Women Of Her Generation, Which Are So Rarely Articulated.

My Nature Is Orderly And Observant And Scrupulous And Deeply Introverted.

The Worst Thing: To Give Yourself Away In Exchange For Not Enough Love.

Unrequited Love

Your Punishment If You're A Woman. Not Loved Enough.

The Books I Read I Do Enjoy, Very Much; Otherwise I Wouldn't Read Them. Most Of Them Are For Review, For The New York Review Of Books, And Substantial.

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.

The Greatest Works Of Literature Seem To Embody Both "art" And "morality".

If Shakespeare's Great Plays Are Variants Of Stories, Even Novels, You Can See How Each Character Is Telling His Story From His Perspective; Each Is Vying With The Others For Dominance, But In The End, In Tragedy, Most Of These Voices Will Die, To Be Replaced By The Yet More Vigorous Voice Of A Younger Generation.

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.

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

Dear Girl! Life Is Addictive. Yet We Must Live.

To Choose The Ideal Voice For A Character Is To Give A Character An Ardent And Vivid Life, To Allow Him Or Her To Speak, Rather Than Speaking For Them, In An Older Style Of Omniscient Narration.

I Always Tell My Students The Same Thing. And That's To Live Life, And To Read Very Voraciously Without Any Definite Program. To Travel, To Meet People, To Talk To People, To Listen Very Carefully, And Not Interrupt, But Listen To Their Own Grandparents Speak Of Their Families.

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

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.

Great Art Is Cathartic; It Is Always Moral.

Nothing Is Accidental In The Universe - This Is One Of My Laws Of Physics - Except The Entire Universe Itself, Which Is Pure Accident, Pure Divinity.

I Don't Know Whether I Am Different From Other People. Perhaps I Am. Perhaps No One Has A Personality, And People Are Inventing Themselves In The Context In Which They Find Themselves.

It Feels Good, Honey, But It Isn't Love.

I Have Forced Myself To Begin Writing When I've Been Utterly Exhausted, When I've Felt My Soul As Thin As A Playing Card…and Somehow The Activity Of Writing Changes Everything.

The Best Revenge Is Living Well Without You.

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.

A Daydreamer Is Prepared For Most Things.

I Come From People Who Did Not Go To College. They Didn't Even Finish High School. People Who One Might Call Ordinary Americans Who Are Very Hardworking.

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.

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

Blood Transforms The Warm Bath Water And, In It, I See Weakly That This Was A Mistake. The Razor's Cut Is Not Deep, Nevertheless The Blood Rushes Out Happily In The Warm Water As If Kin To It, The Same Tender Substance. Rising A New Person Transformed With An Icy Sense Of Error I Go To The Sink And Turn On Cold Water Which Is Not Friendly To Blood. The Cut Is Deeper Than Imagined.

It'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.

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.

"politics" Per Se Is Absent From My Writing But There Is Usually A Moral (if Ironic) Compass.

The Denial Of Language Is A Suicidal One And We Pay For It With Our Own Lives.

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 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.

After My Parents Passed Away - In 2000 And 2003 - I Felt I Could Take The Time To Think About The Past And Imagine What It Would Have Been Like To Be My Grandmother.

The Quiet People Just Do Their Work.

Productivity Is A Relative Matter. And It's Really Insignificant: What Is Ultimately Important Is A Writer's Strongest Books. It May Be The Case That We All Must Write Many Books In Order To Achieve A Few Lasting Ones - Just As A Young Writer Or Poet Might Have To Write Hundreds Of Poems Before Writing His First Significant One.

People Might Be Surprised To Know How Much I Throw Away. For Every Page I Publish, I Throw 10 Pages Away.

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.

Nothing Comes Of So Many Things, If You Have Patience.

Having Patience

You Can't Deny Eros. Eros Wills Trike, Like Lightning. Our Human Defenses Are Frail, Ludicrous. Like Plasterboard Houses In A Hurricane. Your Triumph Is In Perfect Submission. And The God Of Eros Will Flow Through You, As Lawrence Says, In The 'perfect Obliteration Of Blood Consciousness.

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.

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

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

Was It Confusing Because It Was Artistic, Or Artistic Because It Was Confusing?

As A Teacher At Princeton, I'm Surrounded By People Who Work Hard So I Just Make Good Use Of My Time. And I Don't Really Think Of It As Work - Writing A Novel, In One Sense, Is A Problem-solving Exercise.

How Mysterious It Is, To Be In Love. For You Can Be In Love With One Who Knows Nothing Of You. Perhpas Our Greatest Happinesses Spring From Such Longings-being In Love With One Who Is Oblivious Of You.

Like Most People, I Can Be Very Easily Hurt.

It's One Of Those Secrets That's Embarrassing To Acknowledge, But We Do Love Our Students.

Writing Is A Consequence Of Having Been 'haunted' By Material. Why This Is, No One Knows.

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.

...failure Is A Human Condition, Not Victory Over Odds; For Each Hellen Keller Who Triumphs, There Are Tens Of Millions Who Fail, Mute And Deaf And Insensate As Vegetables Tossed Upon A Vast Garbage Pile To Rot.

The Third Man In The Ring Makes Boxing Possible.

Running! If There's Any Activity Happier, More Exhilarating, More Nourishing To The Imagination, I Can't Think What It Might Be. In Running The Mind Flies With The Body; The Mysterious Efflorescence Of Language Seems To Pulse In The Brain, In Rhythm With Our Feet And The Swinging Of Our Arms.

In A Sense, I May Not Consciously Know What I'm Doing. I Feel That I'm Telling A Story. I'm A Kind Of Medium By Which Something Is Transmitted.

Who Is To Blame For This Most Recent Of Sports Disgraces In America? The Culture That Flings Young Athletes Like Tyson Up Out Of Obscurity, Makes Millionaires Of Them And Watches Them Self-destruct?

Novels Begin, Not On The Page, But In Meditation And Day-dreaming - In Thinking, Not Writing.

Criticism Is, For Me, Like Essay Writing, A Wonderful Way Of Relaxation; It Doesn't Require A Heightened And Mediated Voice, Like Prose Fiction, But Rather A Calm, Rational, Even Conversational Voice.

Obviously The Imagination Is Fueled By Emotions Beyond The Control Of The Conscious Mind.

Betrayal Is The Deepest Wound. Betrayal Is What Remains Of Love, When Love Has Gone.

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.

I Have Beliefs, Of Course, Like Everyone-but I Don't Always Believe In Them.

I Believe That Any Form Of Art Is A Species Of Exploration And Transgression. ... Art By Its Nature Is A Transgressive Act, And Artists Must Accept Being Punished For It. The More Original And Unsettling Their Art, The More Devastating The Punishment.

I Am Inclined To Think That As I Grow Older I Will Come To Be Infatuated With The Art Of Revision, And There May Come A Time When I Will Dread Giving Up A Novel At All.

Probably Nothing Serious Or Worthwhile Can Be Accomplished Without One's Willingness To Be Alone For Sustained Periods Of Time, Which Is Not To Say That One Must Live Alone, Obsessively.

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.

... Such Speculation Is Like Staring Into The Hot White Sun. You Know The Sun Is There But You Can't See A Thing.

None Of The Rest Of My Life Figures Here.

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.

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.

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.

If I Try To Summon Back His Face, The Sound Of His Voice, And The Sensation In My Stomach Like A Key Turning In A Lock When He Touched Me, I Lose Everything.

But He Doesn't Love Her. I Invented That. It Is A Plot If You Imagine People In Love--the Lazy Looping Criss Crosses Of Love, Blows, Stares, Tears. No. It Doesn't Happen. No Love. People Meet, Touch, Stare Into One Another's Faces, Shake Their Heads Clear, Move On, Forget. It Doesn't Happen.

There Is No Past Anybody Can Get To, To Alter Things Or Even To Know What Those Things Were But There Is Definitely A Future, We Are Already In It.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I've Never Given Up. I've Always Kept Going. I Don't Feel That I Could Afford To Give Up. That Would Be The Beginning Of The End.

To Claim - To Claim Repeatedly - That You Are Innocent Of What It Is Claimed By Others That You Have Done, Or Might Have Done, Or Are In Some Quarters Strongly Suspected Of Having Done, Is Never Enough Unless Others, Numerous Others, Will Say It For You.

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.

The Novel Is Perhaps The Highest Art Form Because It So Closely Resembles Life: It Is About Human Relationships. It's Technique, Page By Page, Resembles Our Technique Of Living Day By Day-a Way Of Relating.

Ambitious, Absorbing, And Poignantly Moving.

My Belief Is That Art Should Not Be Comforting; For Comfort, We Have Mass Entertainment And One Another. Art Should Provoke, Disturb, Arouse Our Emotions, Expand Our Sympathies In Directions We May Not Anticipate And May Not Even Wish.

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.

Look At The World And See What's There. It's Very Beautiful. It's A Very Exciting But In Some Ways Treacherous World, And All This Goes Into The Writing.

'a Fair Maiden' Existed In Notes And Sketches For Perhaps A Year. When I Traveled, I Would Take Along With Me My Folder Of Notes - 'ideas For Stories.' Eventually, I Began To Write It And Wrote It Fairly Swiftly - In Perhaps Two Months Of Fairly Intense Writing And Rewriting. Most Of My Time Writing Is Really Re-writing.

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

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John Churton Collins

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