Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
The punishment – to the body, the brain, the spirit – a man must endure to become even a moderately good boxer is inconceivable to most of us whose idea of personal risk is largely ego-related or emotional.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Becoming skilled in boxing requires immense physical and mental endurance, which most people can't fathom.
Joyce Carol Oates highlights the profound physical and psychological toll that training to be a proficient boxer entails. She contrasts this intense experience with the perception of personal risk many people have, which is often limited to emotional or ego-related challenges, suggesting that true courage involves enduring and overcoming significant hardships beyond common understanding.
Themes
BoxingEnduranceCourageRiskTraining
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote when discussing the sacrifices required for peak performance in sports.
More from Joyce Carol Oates
All quotes →I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
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