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Joyce Carol Oates Quotes about Reading

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Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

Joyce Carol Oates
Book, Reading, Mean
Joyce Carol Oates (1989). “(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities”, Plume

I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

Joyce Carol Oates
Book, Reading, Awards

All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading, Writing, Ties Of Love

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading, Writing, Trying

Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring.

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading, Writing, Thinking
"Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

I am more or less reading all the time.

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading
Source: www.motherjones.com

That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading, Yield, Inspired
Source: www.motherjones.com

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.

Joyce Carol Oates
Book, Reading, Listening

The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.

Joyce Carol Oates
Spiritual, Reading, Eye
Tavis Smiley interview, PBS, June 28, 2005.

I am always reading or thinking about reading.

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading, Thinking

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.

Joyce Carol Oates
Book, Grandma, Reading

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?

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading, Past, Self
Joyce Carol Oates (1993). “Foxfire: confessions of a girl gang”, E P Dutton

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
Book, Reading, School
Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 23, 2013.

the art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private, and cannot be communicated to others.

Joyce Carol Oates
Art, Pain, Reading
Joyce Carol Oates (1983). “The profane art: essays and reviews”, Dutton Adult

I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it.

Joyce Carol Oates
Book, Reading, Book Reading
Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.8, Zondervan

My first love was reading, which inspired me to write.

Joyce Carol Oates
Reading, Writing, First Love
"Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

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