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1078a5c
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The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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b05e93a
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O.K. he's crazy. But he's a saint too." "He scares me, I don't like him." "He scares me. What the hell-he knows." "Yeah? Why? What does he know?" "--Things most people'd have to die and go to Hell for, to know."
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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842dc83
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for politics is in its essence as Adams had said the 'systematic organiztion of hatred': either you were organized or you were not
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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eb5d609
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Fortunately, the clinical diagnosis "ADD" didn't exist when I was a child, and restless children were not medicated, or I might have been narcotized at an early age, and my brain affected. (No one can tell me that dosing young children with such powerful drugs will have no long-term effect upon them.)"
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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d49420a
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Our house was made of stone, stucco, and clapboard; the newer wings, designed by a big-city architect, had a good deal of glass, and looked out into the Valley, where on good days we could see for many miles while on humid hazy days we could see barely beyond the fence that marked the edge of our property. Father, however, preferred the roof: In his white, light-woolen three-piece suit, white fedora cocked back on his head, for luck, he spe..
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planned-community
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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07d025b
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Like the philosophy credited to Jack Dempsey: The more punches a man takes, the closer he is to the end. Because a man has only a fixed number of punches he can take in his lifetime. "Pa?"
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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6941be3
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The Bog Kingdom. Bidding him enter! Ah, enter! There, all wishes are fulfilled. The more forbidden, the more delicious.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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fe2d3ab
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It was a very American story, somehow. 'Lost.' Each community had such stories. Possibly, each family.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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6ecbadb
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Our lives are Mobius strips, misery and wonder simultaneously. Our destinies are infinite, and infinitely recurring.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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fc6fb27
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Recently she had been going through a period of adolescent melancholia, often talking with her mother, a nurse, about death. She would, she hoped, be some day reincarnated as a cat.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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101a6c5
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On their own, your eyes did not naturally discover the sky.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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bf4f638
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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!
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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aee6bb4
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It simply fell from him, like a heavy overcoat he'd shrugged off, no longer needing its warmth or bulk to protect him.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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7f543e3
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These were no-man's-lands, limbos of a sort, places where language did not prevail and the only protection was flight, if you could run fast enough; or submission if you couldn't.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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4871ed3
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Laughter too depends upon memory--a memory of previous laughter. Dr.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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bfe0c96
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This determination to manage--to cope--to do as much unassisted as possible--is the Widow's prerogative. You might argue that it's a sign of her wish to appear to be--which is not the same as being--self-sufficient; or you might argue that it is a symptom of her derangement. But then, in the early minutes/hours/days of Widowhood--what is not, if examined closely, a symptom of derangement?
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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74731fe
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Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad--I could not bear to "outlive" them--for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me."
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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0300d63
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A man may accommodate himself to a disagreeable situation in a few months. The intolerable may take a little longer.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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853078e
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There could be no romance in the terrible possibility that Gretel Nissenbaum had fled on foot, alone, not to her family but simply to escape from her life; in what exigency of need, what despondency of spirit, no name might be given it by any who have not experienced it.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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14ed9bc
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Bullshit! Li-ar! Your mother and father are dead like everybody else. Everybody is dead.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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cfc3ac9
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But so like Hollywood people, who played at the emotions they truly felt. Or maybe the emotions they truly felt could only be expressed in play?
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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d17e3a5
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In our household, which was essentially under an evil spell, my father 'Chaplin' was all the magic. A great man draws magic into himself, like reverse lightning. There's nothing to spare for anyone else.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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2b5bc4d
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unless it was enough for these worshipers to bask in the knowledge that, though invisible to them and in every way inaccessible to them, the swarthy handsome Ex-Athlete and the beautiful Blond Actress might at that very moment be coupling like Shiva and Shakti, unmaking and making the Universe?
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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9f37ecd
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In marriage, the most intense conversations are often with oneself.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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81289f4
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Josiah feel that, for a moment, he'd been cast back to his adolescent self on this very campus: essentially, a claustrophobic little world of privilege and anxiety in which one was made to care too much about too little.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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90b86a2
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Maybe he'd been mistaken, trying so hard to make his wife and young children happy. Maybe it's always a mistake, trying to assure the happiness of others.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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b4ef96a
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I believe in uttering the truth, even if it hurts. Particularly if it hurts.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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b6357f6
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If I could open a vein. Not to inject any shit, I will never weaken like that again, but just to feel the kick of it, the old memory. So this numbness lifts. So I could get back there easier.
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sobriety
self-mutilation
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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8a1a1f9
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And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self.
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work
soul
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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16db8ec
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Like many shy people, once he began talking he seemed not to know how to stop; he lacked the social sleight of hand to change the subject, and he had no idea how to engage another person. Like a runaway vehicle, he plunged on, heedless.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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3542b9c
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For the widow inhabits a tale not of her own telling.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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f3c388e
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Why is it when I'm inside this stone house I've come to love I can't remember what it looks like from the outside. And when I'm outside I can't remember what it looks like on the inside. Why is it I keep losing my way. The things in the back room taunting me. The views from the windows don't seem to mesh somehow.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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9b0acc1
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Unfamiliar places could be more dangerous than familiar places, unexpectedly. The boy had been discovering that an unfamiliar place was more easily "haunted" than a familiar place simply because there was less there to distract the memory."
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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4cc051a
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She feel these hands tremble, and she could feel Mr. Kidder's excitement. How eager she was to be gone from this room. Her heart was beating in mild revulsion from the man's touch, but Katya forced herself to remain still, politely unresisting. In Mr. Kidder's eyes, which brimmed with moisture, Katya saw such tenderness for her, such desire, or love, she felt that her throat might close, she might begin to cry. Gravely Mr. Kidder lowered hi..
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age-difference
joyce-carol-oates
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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f3c8bca
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Like editing, gardening requires infinite patience; it requires an essential selflessness, and optimism.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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719df84
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NO KISS FORGOTTEN; it resides in the memory as in the flesh, and so Katya many times felt the press of Marcus Kidder's warm mouth on hers in the days and especially in the nights following. And her heartbeat quickened in protest: How could you! Kiss him! That old man! Kiss him! Let him put his arms around you ad kiss you and kiss him back! The old man's mouth and Katya Spivak's mouth! How could you.
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age-difference
joyce-carol-oates
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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804512e
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The gardener is the quintessential optimist: not only does he believe that the future will bear out the fruits of his efforts, he believes in the future.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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b6dce75
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It may be that actual tears have stained the tile floors or soaked into the carpets of such places. It may be that these tears can never be removed. And everywhere the odor of melancholy, that is the very odor of memory.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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860cc08
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it might be argued that our lives are a concatenation of minutiae interrupted at unpredictable times by significant events.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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82d5d4a
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There's a German term- heimweh, homesickness. It's a powerful sensation, like a narcotic. A yearning from home, but for something more- a past self, perhaps. A lost self. When I first saw you on the street, Katya, I felt such a sensation... I have no idea why
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literature
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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00e501b
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Jammed together at lunch. Not a drinker, nevertheless I experience a distinct alteration of consciousness in the presence of others--socially, but even in the classroom or seminar--a heightening, livening, intensifying sensation--a kind of euphoria. (Would the drinkers attain the same heights, without drinking? But they never make the experiment.) The process is deceptive: one feels oneself fulfilled, with these shreds and bits of other peo..
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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c86654a
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Relief is happiness for those who, otherwise, would have no happiness.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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f6344f3
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Words are like wild birds - they will come when they wish, not when they are bidden.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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a47f97c
|
Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers--their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges--But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight--
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Joyce Carol Oates |