A Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

Joyce Carol Oates

Quote Topics

Admired Always Classic David David Thoreau Emily Favorite Few Hard Henry Many Select Very Writers

Quote Author

Joyce Carol Oates
American - Writer
Born: June 16, 1938

What I treasure most at any moment is intimacy, surprise, a sense of mystery, wit, depth and love. A handful of cherished friends offer me this, and the occasional singer or film-maker or artist. But my most reliable sources of electricity are Henry David Thoreau, Shakespeare, Melville and Emily Dickinson.

Pico Iyer

That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

Renata Adler

The O. Henry has become lingua franca among writers for saying, 'That guy can write a story.' It's prestigious, respected, coveted, dreamed about. It's very satisfying to be included in this group of writers. Here's a koan: Could O. Henry win an O. Henry?

Tony D'Souza

Sloane Crosley and David Sedaris are two of my favorite writers; they're the kind of writers who make you feel like, 'I can do this. I want to do this.'

Leandra Medine

Fortunately, we have writers who very much respect the classic characters and the integrity of the classic characters, that are also terrific comedy writers and are able to put these classic characters in new and interesting, and quite funny situations for today.

Bob Bergen

Some readers may be disturbed that I wrote 'The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson' in Emily's own voice. I wasn't trying to steal her thunder or her music. I simply wanted to imagine my way into the head and heart of Emily Dickinson.

Jerome Charyn

I like the story about Henry David Thoreau, who, when he was on his death bed, his family sent for a minister. The minister said, 'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' Thoreau said, 'I didn't know we'd quarreled.'

Stewart Udall

Living in a cultural milieu where the foreign writers most widely available and admired were Russian, I came very late to postwar American writers, and I had great trouble with the canonically exalted white male writers I tried first.

Pankaj Mishra

I was not really aware of the dystopian genre before I read 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Many poets as well, like John Donne and Emily Dickinson, would be the influences; I specialized in Emily Dickinson at university. Both of those poets have really interesting ways of looking at life and death.

Samantha Shannon

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

Marvin Ammori

There are good writers and bad writers. It's hard to find writers who really speak to you, but the work is out there.

Colson Whitehead

I try really hard to ask people to take a look at their bookshelves. Are there female writers on it? Gay writers? Writers of color? There should be.

Jodi Picoult

Most of my favorite writers are over forty, and so I suppose I'll only name a few of the writers whose work I find myself constantly returning to: Edward P. Jones, Marilynne Robinson, Kazuo Ishiguro, V. S. Naipaul, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth.

Dinaw Mengestu

If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms.

Quentin S. Crisp

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.

Joyce Carol Oates

A Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors