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c60dfa9
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that I--I have not 'heard' . . . What is it?
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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5becb23
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How alone this was going to be.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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ff8f04f
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But thinking it my duty to stretch the flayed skin of my childhood on some sort of skeleton of convention
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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99207f6
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The fundamental truth of my life whether in fact it was truth or a burlesque of truth: when a man wants you, you're safe.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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b10b3d3
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Life is the horror, abortion or miscarriage is the redemption. As Sophocles said so beautifully, 'Never to have been born is best, but once you've entered this world, return as quickly as possible to the place you came from.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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323cd7d
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I could "talk fast" -- that's to say, without hesitating, stammering -- most of the time -- but there were categories of words, sentiments, I could never say, they'd have stuck in my throat. The embarrassment of it even whispering-teasing to Legs for instance 'Yeah you're my heart too!' or 'I love you' or 'I would die for you', nobody ever talked that way, mostly there was just my mother and me and we hardly talked at all."
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love
romantic-friendship
teenagers
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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0c92dc9
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What is destiny--a mechanical fact, a theoretical possibility, a concept, a superstition, a mere word? Ian McCullough was inclined to think one or another of these depending upon his mood. Destiny, the seemingly benign verso of fate.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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f058033
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I wasn't so special, honey. Except that I was your dad, I wasn't so special.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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9ab17db
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Especially she dreaded the isolation of the swimmer, amid propelled and splashing figures yet she was isolated, always one isolated in the water where thoughts await like froth on the surface of the water that smelled like chemicals.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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d69c6e0
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Never can you climb over this wall, you're not strong enough; girls aren't strong enough; girls aren't big enough; your body is fragile and breakable, like a doll; your body is a doll; your body is for others to admire and to pet; your body is to be used by others, not used by you; your body is a luscious fruit for others to bite into and to savor; your body is for others, not for you.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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d7b2295
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You can think of your life as the mistakes you made that catch up with you finally.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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aeda699
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It is a terrible thing to feel that you might break down, you might utter a confession that could not then be retrieved.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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5c9521c
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Secrets have always been easy for me, it's the opposite of secrets that is hard.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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316c3e5
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Love is not enough to keep us from harm.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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570da93
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Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can return.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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eba7411
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In dreams sometimes it is like this. I am lying very still, my arms and legs are numb or paralyzed. There is a medical term--peripheral neuropathy. A tingling sensation in fingers and toes that moves upward bringing with it a loss of feeling, a spreading numbness, a kind of amnesia of the body.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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2f83b00
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Were you wounded when your marriage collapsed? When your love collapsed? Or does love never "collapse," only just fade gradually away?"
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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29816e3
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In the throat, the male is as vulnerable as the female. Once the sharp points of the shears pierce his skin, puncture the artery, there will be no turning back for either of them.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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32e9423
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He thinks: He could give up. He could admit defeat. But he will not admit defeat. He is still alive.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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f360887
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Love is what can't be helped. When it waxes, and when it wanes. Love is what happens when you've been looking another way. Love is that sensation of something on the back of your neck, tell yourself it's nothing, a strand of hair, at last you touch it and discover it's an insect--you cast off with a curse.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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276075e
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What've I got to do, to prove how much I love you? Blow us all away?
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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c422078
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Suicide is in fact a consoling thought. Suicide is the secret door by which you can exit the world at any time--it's wholly up to you. For who can prevent you, if suicide is truly your wish? Who has the moral authority,
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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c802534
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THANK YOU but please do not write again. And do not call. I have had enough of you.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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ae41270
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For it seemed (though why it seemed so, no one knew) that everything began on that night. And, once begun, it could not be stopped.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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9c1cb62
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No one would be able to name what had happened or would wish to name it. Rape was a word that came not be spoken at High Point Farm.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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fb65f81
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In so sick a society as ours how is it possible that any citizen is healthy, at all?
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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1b8375f
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Not hearing impaired but just not hearing which is a way of not caring.)
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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c0a09a0
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First marriage, and nothing so sweet! You don't know it at the time.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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c3ec76e
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A library is a mausoleum: books of the dead. And so many. And so many secrets lost to him forever. Hadn't time for it all and if he couldn't do it all then there was no point in doing any of it. For such an effort would be like drawing a single breath in the knowledge that you would not draw another. You were fated to suffocate, to die. You were fated to become extinct.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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ebafe53
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All prices of all things--at least, useless beautiful things like rare books--are inherently absurd, rooted in the human imagination and in the all-too-human predilection to desperately want what others value highly, and to scorn what others fail to value.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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73274b6
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He said no break is permanent. Like a bone that heals crooked, still it will heal.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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de4e852
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He had no idea of my misery. It would have surprised him to think that I was a human creature with a soul.
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horror
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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93e3905
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Ian...paused for a moment on the threshold and stared, overcome by a sudden sense of confronting, not the men and women who were his friends, but a gathering of souls. How strange we are to one another, he thought. Each soul was encased in flesh, bound by an envelope of skin, turned inward, immersed in silence. The soul was light, or flame--its heat small, ephemeral, easily extinguished. Ian stared and felt afraid: yet felt, in that instant..
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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1d5c7c0
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My crappy-kid's life. It was mostly a shitty life wasn't it, OK but I miss it.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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1bee2c5
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the terrible intimacy of pregnancy,
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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47f60c8
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I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space--who else? & that night in my sand-colored 1987 Ford van with the American flag decal covering the rear window cruising Cedar Street, Dale Springs & parked in shadow & with my binoculars trained to the mostly shaded or darkened windows I thought, If this is where I am this is who I am. & so it was.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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64ae246
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Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'--the Americans understand this admonition, deep in their killer-souls.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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b0d3c3b
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A bully is one who forces you to laugh at his jokes, even if they are not jokes. That is how you know he is a bully. A
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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68a1855
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Nothing is 'mythic,' close up. Nothing is 'mythic' where you live.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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b89cb9d
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powerful blow from a practiced boxer can stop an opponent's heart, it is said. It's a cruel blow but it can be thrown easily if you have the strength and the skill and the will to do such lethal hurt, and if your opponent has no skills of self-defense. Carefully
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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2fc2da3
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It was remarkable to Julia--(it did not hurt or offend her, but only amused her)--how Ryan's family managed to take photographs or videos of themselves that excluded her.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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f98aa3a
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In her behavior Mrs. S----was youthful and loud-talking which made us uneasy, for children are not comfortable when adults behave as if they are not adults. Often it seemed that Mrs. S----was winking at us as if there was some joke between her and us, unexplained.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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f64e7e8
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You could be thoroughly an intellectual while not surrendering maleness; you could not be so totally intellectual and not surrender some degree of femaleness.
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Joyce Carol Oates |
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a1c92c6
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How bizarre it seems to us, Hudson had been looking for a route to the Pacific Ocean, as his predecessor Christopher Columbus had been looking for a route to the East Indies . . . I thought The routes we think we are taking are not the routes we will take. The routes that take us. I
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Joyce Carol Oates |