Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.
Joyce Carol OatesBetrayal is the deepest wound. Betrayal is what remains of love, when love has gone.
Joyce Carol OatesThe innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.
Joyce Carol OatesI can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing--for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.
Joyce Carol Oates