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.

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

I could never take the idea of religion very seriously.

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

In love there are two things - bodies and words.

Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

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.

Anyone who teaches knows that you don't really experience a text until you've taught it, in loving detail, with an intelligent and responsive class.

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.

Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.