Quotes from Joyce Carol Oates

At such rare times you can feel the electrically charged neurons of the prefrontal brain realigning themselves like iron fillings drawn by a magnet.

Baseball, football, basketball - these quintessentially American pastimes are recognizably sports because they involve play: they are games. One plays football, one doesn't play boxing...The boxing match is the very image, the more terrifying for being so stylized, of mankind's collective aggression; its ongoing historical madness.

Great handfuls of her life were being stolen from her and she would never be able to retrieve them.

Words are like wild birds - they will come when they wish, not when they are bidden.

My bridal gown. So beautiful in design but it was never sewed. So lovely, ivory lace, ivory silk, sheer lace back, pleated bodice and flared skirt never sewed. My veil, my train. (So foolish the bridal train, trailing along the ground, on dirty steps. What possible purpose, beautiful and costly dazzling-white silk so quickly spoiled.) The bridal design held us captive. My dear mother, and me. And so, when I was married to my husband it seemed to me a second marriage.

She would become, through the years, a woman who expected the worst, to relieve herself of the anxiety of hope. She would become a woman of calm, fatalistic principles, anticipating her life with the equanimity of a weather forecaster.

The surreal is as integral a part of our lives as the 'real,' although one might argue that, since the unconscious underlies consciousness, and we are continuously bombarded by images, moods, and memories from that uncharitable terrain, it is in fact more primary than the 'real.

The standards for horror fiction should be no less than those for 'serious literary' fiction in which originality of concept, depth of characters, and attentiveness to language are vitally important.

The minutiae of our lives! Telephone calls, errands, appointments. None of these is of the slightest significance to others and but fleetingly to us yet they constitute such a portion of our lives, it might be argued that our lives are a concatenation of minutiae interrupted at unpredictable times by significant events.

I'd like to be your friend—but only if you promise not to ever, ever count on me.

If she lets us down, if she's weird sometimes—just ignore it, and love her. Just love her.

We never have time, do we, for all that we don't exactly want to do.

That I was sleeping at a time when my husband was dying is so horrible a thought, I can't confront it.

How strange it is, to be walking away. Is it possible that I am really going to leave Ray—here? Is it possible that he won't be coming home with me in another day or two, as we'd planned? Such a thought is too profound for me to grasp. It's like fitting a large unwieldy object in a small space. My brain hurts, trying to contain it.

It was not yet known how the Revolution would develop. But Upton supposed that the arguments of the philosophical anarchists were most convincing: society would fragmentise into independent, self-governing communities of mutually congenial individuals, requiring no police, no army, no guardians of morality, and no government. The old Deity being dead and dethroned, Humankind would come at last into power.

Legally I am a 'widow' — that is the box I must check. But beyond that — I am not sure that I ­exist.

On the way home Mary Lou said, Some things are so sad you can't say them. But I pretended not to hear.

Can compromise be an art? Yes--but a minor art.

Once upon a time the fairy tales begin. But then they end and often you don't know really what has happened, what was meant to happen, you only know what you've been told, what the words suggest.

Sick?--What's sick? Who is 'well'? Do you imagine, if you or I were minutely examined, we would be one hundred percent 'well'?

We begin as children imagining and fearing ghosts. By degrees, through our long lives, we come to be the very ghosts inhabiting the lost landscapes of our childhood.

Momma used to say, you got to know when to move. More important than knowing when to stay put.

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

Legs was always proud even before FOXFIRE, that's the primary fact about Legs Sadovsky: pride.