Joyce Carol Oates quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Joyce Carol Oates on Wise Famous Quotes.

No way of life so entrenched will ever 'wither away' - it must be helped, with dynamite, if need be.

The regional voice is the universal voice.

Not what the mind sees, but what the mind imagines the eye must see.

The Bog Kingdom. Bidding him enter! Ah, enter! There, all wishes are fulfilled. The more forbidden, the more delicious.

The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.

We see the shadows of things, not the things themselves . . . We are forced to imagine what the writer doesn't reveal.

Fear in her eyes that were a damp blurred blue Patrick would afterward recall,

The murderer is not protected! He is vulnerable. TO

Laughter too depends upon memory - a memory of previous laughter. Dr.

For once a truth is known it cannot be unknown, it can only be denied.

A diverse and lively collection, the highest art of the interview.

I could EAT YOUR HEART & asshole you'd never know it.

For the wanting to be good,in defiance of justice, is one of mankind's greatest weaknesses.

While madness in individuals is relatively rare, it is virtually a prerequisite for a certain sort of political leader.

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

Great handfuls of her life were being stolen from her and she would never be able to retrieve them.

I love insult, it's always honest.

Mom was stubborn, and eloquent.

Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.

At such rare times you can feel the electrically charged neurons of the prefrontal brain realigning themselves like iron fillings drawn by a magnet.

That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.

The mere passage of time makes us all exiles.

HUSBAND: Is something wrong?
BETHIE: Why
why do you ask?
HUSBAND: You looked so lonely, suddenly. As if you'd forgotten I'm here.

A woman who has lost her husband is invalid, thus an invalid. In

In love there are two things - bodies and words.

Art is the highest expression of the human spirit.

We never have time, do we, for all that we don't exactly want to do.

The suicide does not play the game, does not observe the rules. He leaves the party too soon, and leaves the other guests painfully uncomfortable.

It's fine, I have it. It's fine.

The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.

Sunny wintry days. The idyll of (inner) loneliness. What am I going to do with my life?

Her Quaker instincts led her to apologize for wrongs not her own to minimize conflict.

For politics is in its essence as Adams had said the 'systematic organiztion of hatred': either you were organized or you were not

no one knew what to do with Ariah Erskine, who refused to behave as others wished her to behave.

FOR HYSTERICAL MAIDENS I WOULD PRESCRIBE MARRIAGE, FOR THEY ARE CURED BY PREGNANCY. - Hippocrates

The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.

The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.

And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.

The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

There is no religion higher than truth.

Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.

Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.

The man is too narcissistic, too shallow and cowardly for suicide. Days

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

Running! If there is any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I cannot think of what it might be.

Dear girl! Life is addictive. Yet we must live.

I am snatching at things to prove my life.

In so sick a society as ours how is it possible that any citizen is healthy, at all?

It simply fell from him, like a heavy overcoat he'd shrugged off, no longer needing its warmth or bulk to protect him.

For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted.

Foolish woman, don't despair. My justice is My mercy. 5

I learned you don't discover the evidence of any cause in its result.

Marianne laughed. But you can't disappoint me! I don't love you.

Such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.

Every scar in my face is worth it.

I am always reading or thinking about reading.

On their own, your eyes did not naturally discover the sky.

Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.

The great happiness in life in creativity belongs to amateurs.

The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought.

To love life for some men is to love fighting, for fighting, and not love, is seen as man's deepest passion.

It might be argued that our lives are a concatenation of minutiae interrupted at unpredictable times by significant events.

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

I learned long ago that being Lewis Carroll was infinitely more exciting than being Alice.

As a librarian for 18 years at the Merck branch of the Trenton Public Library, I was sorely tested by the slow-witted and obtuse among the citizenry

It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.

Love you in that cheerleader's costume. Last Friday. You didn't see me I guess. But I was there.

The mysteries of the female sex! We men can never hope to fathom your depths, but only try not to drown in them.

Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

All actors are whores.
They want only one thing: to seduce you.

The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct

He was eight years older than I was, most of the calendar year.

Acting is the loneliest profession I know.

Evil isn't a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior.

Is there any mystery like who you finally turn out to be.

It had given him a charge of entitlement and invincibility he would draw upon through life, like a limitless bank account.)

"Because there has been no one to stop me" has been one of the principles of my life.

Legs was always proud even before FOXFIRE, that's the primary fact about Legs Sadovsky: pride.

In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved

Starting a novel is like standing in a field and waiting for lightning to strike.

These are the moments for which we live.

Like editing, gardening requires infinite patience; it requires an essential selflessness, and optimism.

People might be surprised to know how much I throw away. For every page I publish, I throw 10 pages away.

You ordinary people who read and do not write, who 'like to read' and know nothing of the sufferings of writers, how fortunate you are!

In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.

The quiet people just do their work.

Della Rae was a pig and she was smashed out of her skull and you didn't want to think about it,

On the elusive gift of blending austerity of craft with elasticity of allure.

Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.

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.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

I'd like to be your friend - but only if you promise not to ever, ever count on me.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

Gossip - invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate the truth.

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

How exhausted I am suddenly! - though this has been Ray's best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling - almost - exhilarated.

Corset,' Mrs. Erskine? I don't understand." Because she was trussed up in one herself, she couldn't comprehend how Ariah had escaped hers.

Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.