Quotes from Joyce Carol Oates

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

"Because there has been no one to stop me" has been one of the principles of my life.

Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.

Often in gothic novels there's a large house, an estate, and it's symbolic of that culture. Usually it's sort of moldering or rotted or something, and sometimes it's a whole community.

I think whenever we think of our hometowns, we tend to think of very specific people: with whom you rode on the school bus, who was your next door neighbor you were playing with, who your girlfriend was. It's always something very specific.

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.

Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's 'Requiem Mass.' You know, it's very beautiful and elevated thoughts and some measure of dignity. I didn't have that experience at all. I had one pratfall after another.

A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

In 'We Were the Mulvaneys,' animals are almost as important as people. I wanted to show the tenderness in our relationships with cats, dogs, and horses. Especially cats.

Boxing is rough. Even if you win, you get hurt.

There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.

There is something thrilling in the mimesis of life's surprising unfolding.

As soon as I moved to Princeton in 1978, I became fascinated by local history, much of it Revolutionary War-era; and I became fascinated by the presidency of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University.

Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.

And I'm drawn to failure. I often write about it, and I'm sympathetic with it, I think, because I feel I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.

My life is a very interior and solitary life. I tend not to care that much about external things.

The great happiness in life in creativity belongs to amateurs.

The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

One of life's minor satisfactions is forgetting.

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

One writes to memorialize, and to bring to life again that which has been lost.

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.