“Literature grants us few of the consolations and none of the vatic promises of religion, but is our religion nonetheless.”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com
“That, by way of a book, we have the ability to transcend what is immediate, what is merely personal, and to enter a consciousness not known to us, in some cases distinctly alien.”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com
“Consider the phenomenon of reading, that most mysterious of acts. It is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin; another’s voice; another’s soul.”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com
“There are pleasures in reading so startling, so intense, they shade into pain. The realization that one’s life has been irrevocably altered by . . . can it be mere words? Print on a page? The most life-rending discoveries involve what has in fact never been thought, never given form, until another’s…”— Joyce Carol Oates, narrativemagazine.com