Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

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.

I was nineteen years five months old when I fell in love for the first time. This seemed to me a profound, advanced age; never can we anticipate being older than we are, or wiser; if we're exhausted, it's impossible to anticipate being strong; as, in the grip of a dream, we rarely understand that we're dreaming, and will escape by the simplest of methods, opening our eyes.

I live now for my work. I live for my work. I live only for my work. One day I will do work deserving of my talent & desire. One day. This I pledge. This I vow. I want you to love me for my work. But if you don't love me I can't continue my work. So please love me! - so I can continue my work. I am trapped here! I am trapped in this blond mannequin with the face. I can only breathe through that face! Those nostrils! That mouth! Help me to be perfect. If God was in us, we would be perfect. God is not in us, we know this for we are not perfect. I don't want money & fame. I want only to be perfect. The blond mannequin Monroe is me & is not me. She is not me. She is what I was born. Yes I want you to love her. So you will love me. Oh I want to love you! Where are you? I look, I look & there is no one there.

You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source.

Time is the enemy of lovers. Worse even than the frank light of day.

"At least," Mother said, "that's the story Aunt Esther tells."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Isn't it true?"
"Stories are never 'true'," Mother said. "But they may, almost by accident, contain 'truth'. Sometimes."

Oh, it’s a terrible, cruel thing — first you’re young, and that takes up such a long time you think it’s forever, then suddenly you’re not young, and you never get used to it — and, oh dear, there’s just the one way out.

None of the rest of my life figures here.

لا يمكنني التورط مع رجل لا يهمه أمري وأمر طفلتي وحياتنا معًا، أكثر من اهتمامه بغريب ... لا يمكنني التورط مع رجل لا يهمه إن عاش أو مات! يرمي بحياته مثل الزهر وكأن لا قيمة لها

Dorie herself was not very surprised, because a daydreamer is prepared for most things and in a way she had planned even this, though she had not guessed how it would come about.

Memory blurs, that’s the point. If memory didn’t blur you wouldn’t have the fool’s courage to do things again, again, again that tear you apart.

She had no existence, in herself. From earliest childhood she had believed this. Rather she was a reflecting surface, reflecting others' perception of her, and love of her.

You love the life you've lived because it is yours.

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

The novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure.