Joyce Carol Oates Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings 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 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.
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.
At such rare times you can feel the electrically charged neurons of the prefrontal brain realigning themselves like iron fillings drawn by a magnet.
HUSBAND: Is something wrong?
BETHIE: Why
why do you ask?
HUSBAND: You looked so lonely, suddenly. As if you'd forgotten I'm here.
BETHIE: Why
why do you ask?
HUSBAND: You looked so lonely, suddenly. As if you'd forgotten I'm here.
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.
For politics is in its essence as Adams had said the 'systematic organiztion of hatred': either you were organized or you were not
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.
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.
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.
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.
Such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.
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 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.
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
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?
The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct
It had given him a charge of entitlement and invincibility he would draw upon through life, like a limitless bank account.)
In no other sport is the connection between performer and observer so intimate, so frequently painful, so unresolved
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.
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.
How exhausted I am suddenly! - though this has been Ray's best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling - almost - exhilarated.