Joyce Carol Oates

Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.

What does it mean to be born? After we die, will it be the same thing as it was before we were born? Or a different kind of nothingness? Because there might be knowledge then. Memory.

Why should I want what's good for me?' Beatrice asked him, smiling. 'Is that what you want for yourself - only what's good for you?

After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.

A typical biography relying upon individuals' notorious memories and the anecdotes they've invented contains a high degree of fiction, yet is considered 'nonfiction.'

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse.

After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

Tragedy is the highest form of art.

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

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.

To be knocked out doesn't mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.

Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?

From Mother you will inherit the belief that you can journey to your fate, there's a place to be located on a map that's destiny. If only you can get there. If it isn't too late. If no one stops you.

Writing! The activity for which the only adequate bribe is the possibility of suicide, one day.

There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.

Where there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too.

She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.

I'm nobody's daughter now. I'm through with that.