Quotes from Joyce Carol Oates

Anything that happens to me as a writer has been precipitated by an action of my own.

Love is what can't be helped. When it waxes, and when it wanes.

I don't need to shut my eyes to go blind... When your blind time passes strangely Floating and dreamy in a way speeded up like the Time Traveler apon his machine.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'—the Americans understand this admonition, deep in their killer-souls.

Stalwart Zeno seemed oblivious, that faith in his daughter being alive after more than forty days did not compute with faith that Brett Kincaid would soon be arrested for a crime involving his daughter.

F]or, living our lives, as our bodies live for us, we are not at all clockwork; we do not feel ourselves to be clockwork; each second is new to us, quicksilver and unexpected, undefined.

It was the fate of mothers, to remember. What nobody else would know or care about. That, when they are gone, goes with them.

In marriage, one plus one is more than the sum of two. But sometimes in a marriage, one plus one is less than the sum of two.

The wife felt the rebuke. For some rebukes are husbandly.

I am snatching at things to prove my life.

I broke a mirror and the pieces floated to China Goodbye!

The only love that matters is the absolute unreasonable unqualified and unearned love - the love you'd absorbed into the very pores of your being as a child, scarcely aware of your good fortune.

It was generally known, there was an epidemic of suicide among former soldiers.

It had well be a dream, no one would believe me anyway.

Nothing is 'mythic,' close up. Nothing is 'mythic' where you live.

How like science fiction our lives are, she thinks. The alternate universe in which, innocently, ignorantly, we continue to exist as we'd been, unaware that, in another universe, we'd have ceased to be.

For the wanting to be good,in defiance of justice, is one of mankind's greatest weaknesses.

Dominique (who, like other Catamount girls, had a cache of pills for every occasion) offered me a bennie- Benzedrine?- to elevate my spirits. Adamantly I told her, No thanks! I wanted to face what's called reality with my eyes open. I've made that a principle for my life. Sometimes I wonder if this has been a wise decision.

What a barbaric way to rise into the air, hauling your own carcass up inches at a time.

My crappy-kid's life. It was mostly a shitty life wasn't it, OK but I miss it.

left the house in time to catch the bus. Lorraine called goodbye after her as always but Tippi scarcely glanced back, and her voice was flat, almost inaudible—"Bye, Mom.

the term "trauma" was not common usage. Like other adults of the era my parents believed that healing was a matter of not dwelling upon the past.

No hagas caso a tu abuela, cariño. Ella es de los tiempos del cine mudo y nosotras, del sonoro.

Traição é uma coisa dolorosa. Traição é a ferida mais profunda. Traição é o que resta do amor depois que o amor acaba.