Quotes from Joyce Carol Oates

When you said Please to those who...had no option but to obey, what were you really saying?

we so resented that asshole up there talking talking talking taking up the entire assembly expecting us to believe there isn't a special creation of God, or of man, to which we didn't belong, here in the shabby south end of Hammond in the worst damn public school in the district, we didn't belong and never would. And what the hell? ---Such truths, FOXFIRE made softer.

papà ci amava. Ci ama. Diceva che, se non ci avesse voluto bene, non ci avrebbe punite. Riesco a capirlo, davvero. Però è un modo di pensare malato, e sbagliato".

A mí me resultaba fascinante oír a mi hermano mayor hablando a nuestro padre como un niño, como yo, que tenía diez años. Se me ocurrió una cosa: «¿Nunca nos hacemos mayores?». Por alguna extraña razón, eso me consolaba.

no one knew what to do with Ariah Erskine, who refused to behave as others wished her to behave.

her employer Carl Spader had a saying: You're in politics, you're an optimist. You're no longer an optimist, you're no longer in politics. You're no longer an optimist, you're dead.

Everything that you think is solid is actually fleeting and ephemeral.

Es curioso, siempre sabes más de lo que dices. Quiero decir, cualquier persona. Lo que dices siempre es menos de lo que sabes.

Live like it's your life.

Extraño: que cuando una luz se apaga, inmediatamente después es como si nunca hubiera existido. La oscuridad lo llena todo de nuevo, por completo.

Katya stood in the doorway at the rear of Mr Kidder's studio and could not seem to step out onto the terrace and run away. Panting like a dog that has been trained by his master and can't break out of his training, though his training has hurt, humbled, humiliated him and enslaved him.

Just to pose certain questions is, I guess, to show your hope they can be answered.

Yet within seconds she summoned her steely will, this will that so impressed Dirk Burnaby, for he'd never encountered anything like it in his life, establishing where she was, and why. The bad dream was outside her, in the world. She must conquer it there or nowhere.

La memoria a veces resulta confusa, esa es la cuestión. Si la memoria no fuera confusa no poseerías el valor del necio de repetir una y otra vez cosas que te destrozan.

unyielding—Oh Norma Jeane leads a crazy life, you see—she has a former husband very jealous of her—he is her "ex" but he is

My God, the sense of fatigue…

Ever rising like the souls of the damned seeking salvation," Ariah said to Dirk Burnaby, in one of her rare moments of noticing him. Her fixed, wistful smile made him shudder.)

At such times you give yourself over to His will. There is no opposition to God, there is only surrender.

Confiad en lo interior, no en lo exterior. Confiad en el alma, no en el Estado.

I'd rather be truth-telling and I hope always to be without hypocrisy.

It was like a storybook: her life was being written for her. She did not have to write it, only just to read it. The pages were being turned for her, too

Of my own experience at Princeton as a graduate, with honors, of the Class of 1927, I will not speak: except to say that it was instructive, and illuminating; and if I had to repeat it again, I would hang myself.

Yet, you might well be here, visiting the Yewville library as a longtime patron.

First principle of life: Breathe.