Joyce Carol Oates quotes

In love there are two things - bodies and words. (Joyce Carol Oates)
Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort - these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
I never change, I simply become more myself. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
[The] third man in the ring makes boxing possible. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
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. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food? (Joyce Carol Oates)
Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: Keep trying, don't give up, don't be discouraged, don't pay attention to detractors. Everyone knows this. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Boxing has become America's tragic theater. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Death is just the last scene of the last act. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
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. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
When poets - write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful preparation of meals, the serving of meals, meals communally shared: a sense of the sacred in the profane. (Joyce Carol Oates)
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. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates
It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim. View quote
Joyce Carol Oates