Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves,
unable to see that here, now,
this very moment is sacred;
but once it’s gone –
its value is incontestable.

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

Taking the law into your own hands, fuck what's wrong with that?

"Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery."

When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.

Why you can't trust women. Even young girls. Can't know what the fuck they are thinking, can't know what they are feeling, can't know how they will surprise you except to know it won't be a surprise you will like.

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

The danger of motherhood. you relive your early self, through the eyes of your mother.

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

I'm drawn to failure. I feel that I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.

الوحدة كالتضور جوعًا: لا يمكنك أن تدرك إلى أي مدى أنت جائع حتى تبدأ في الأكل.

Adriana loved even the rank animal smell of the man's body, her sweat-slicked breasts and belly flattened beneath him, and her arms and legs clutching him as a drowning woman might clutch another person to save her life. Don't don't don't don't leave me. DON'T LEAVE ME. As in animal copulation the frenzy is to be locked together not out of sentiment or choice but physical compulsion. As if bolts of electric current ran through both their bodies and would only release them from each other when it ceased.

There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won't receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.

Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.