Joyce Carol Oates

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.

— Joyce Carol Oates

A three-quarter moon, glowering bone, with a hint of something bruised, battered, scarred. The moon has endured more than anybody can know.

— Joyce Carol Oates

A wet autumn morning, a garbage truck clattering down the street. The first snowfall of the season, blossom sized flakes falling languidly and melting on the ground, a premature snow fall delicate as lace, rapidly melting.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them.

— Joyce Carol Oates

... because the Legs wasn't fearful of heights or swimming in rough water or Death itself she wasn't afraid to risk making a fool of herself. Maybe you think that's something of no consequence, but it isn't - for making a fool of yourself, offering yourself to others to laugh at, to jeer, that takes guts.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

— Joyce Carol Oates

But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping crisscrosses 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.

— Joyce Carol Oates