لا يمكنني التورط مع رجل لا يهمه أمري وأمر طفلتي وحياتنا معًا، أكثر من اهتمامه بغريب ... لا يمكنني التورط مع رجل لا يهمه إن عاش أو مات! يرمي بحياته مثل… - Joyce Carol Oates

I 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.

For the first time driving that day I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rushing through the emptiness of space. Spinning on its axis but they say you don't feel it, you can't experience it. But to feel it is to be scared and happy at once and to know that nothing matters but that you do what you want to do and what you do you are. And I knew I was moving into the future. There is not PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or ever to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.

When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.