"Diversity has been written into the DNA of American life; any institution that lacks a rainbow array has come to seem diminished, if not diseased."

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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 Oates