Joyce Carol Oates: Quotes about love

Joyce Carol Oates is American author. Explore interesting quotes on love.
Joyce Carol Oates: 178 quotes3 likes

“In love there are two things - bodies and words.”

Joyce Carol Oates

“It feels good, honey, but it isn't love.”

Joyce Carol Oates book You Must Remember This

Source: You Must Remember This

“How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.”

Joyce Carol Oates Little Bird of Heaven (1st edition)

Source: Little Bird of Heaven

“Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.”

Joyce Carol Oates

On Boxing (1987)

“I love insult, it's always honest.”

Joyce Carol Oates book Beasts

Source: Beasts

“The spectacle of human beings fighting each other for whatever reason, including, at certain well-publicized times, staggering sums of money, is enormously disturbing because it violates a taboo of our civilization. Many men and women, however they steel themselves, cannot watch a boxing match because they cannot allow themselves to see what it is they are seeing. One thinks helplessly, This can’t be happening, even as, and usually quite routinely, it is happening. In this way boxing as a public spectacle is akin to pornography: in each case the spectator is made a voyeur, distanced, yet presumably intimately involved, in an event that is not supposed to happening as it is happening. The pornographic "drama," though as fraudulent as professional wrestling, makes a claim for being about something absolutely serious, if not humanly profound: it is not so much about itself as about the violation of a taboo. That the taboo is spiritual rather than physical, or sexual — that our most valuable human experience, love, is being is being desecrated, parodied, mocked — is surely at the core of our culture’s fascination with pornography.”

Joyce Carol Oates

On Boxing (1987)

“When you’re 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity — but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.”

Joyce Carol Oates

Interview in The Guardian (18 August 1989)

“It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.”

Joyce Carol Oates

Address at Mount Holyoke College (2006)