142 Quotes & Sayings By Joyce Carol Oates

And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable. Joyce Carol Oates

I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life. Joyce Carol Oates

The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable. Joyce Carol Oates

But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch, stare into one another's faces, shake their heads clear, move on, forget. It doesn't happen. Joyce Carol Oates

... because the Legs wasn't fearful of heights or swimming in rough water or Death itself she wasn't afraid to risk making a fool of herself. Maybe you think that's something of no consequence but it isn't - for making a fool of yourself, offering yourself to others to laugh at, to jeer, that takes guts. Joyce Carol Oates

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul. Joyce Carol Oates

The distinction between "assistant" and intern" is a simple one: assistants are paid, interns are not. But of course interns are paid, in experience. Joyce Carol Oates

Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

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

The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

Popular! In America, what else matters? Joyce Carol Oates

It had seemed to me an elegant nightmare concoction made by adults for adults, to further the aims and fantasies of adults, and what have children to do with such things? Joyce Carol Oates

He had no idea of my misery. It would have surprised him to think that I was a human creature with a soul. Joyce Carol Oates

There’s a German term- heimweh, homesickness. It’s a powerful sensation, like a narcotic. A yearning from home, but for something more- a past self, perhaps. A lost self. When I first saw you on the street, Katya, I felt such a sensation… I have no idea why Joyce Carol Oates

The best part of being a nanny, Katya thought, was reading children’s books aloud to enraptured children like Tricia, for no one had read such books aloud to her when she’d been a little girl. There hadn’t been such books in the Spivak household on County Line Road, nor would there have been any time for such interludes. Joyce Carol Oates

A fear of the unknown: what was that called? Worse yet: a fear of the known. Joyce Carol Oates

I have no inner life. I have no ‘intimate’ life. I am just what I-what to do. I move from one habitation to another like one of those-is it herit crabs? Taking up residence in others shells.(…) Others’ shells are fine. You come, and then you go. They’re gone Joyce Carol Oates

Derailed. In exile. Deeply ashamed, despised. Yet she had so little pride, she was grateful most days simply to be alive. There is Minimalist art; there are minimalist lives. Joyce Carol Oates

I know that there are many essential biological differences between the sexes, of course. But not so many ‘culturally-mandated’ differences. In First World countries we’ve evolved beyond mere biology -it isn’t the fate of the human female to be pregnant continously until she wears out and dies. Joyce Carol Oates

And I like your laugh, Sabbath; it’s inaudible. Joyce Carol Oates

Freaky kids like us can’t ever be normal- Tyler says smugly- Our generation is some new kind of “evolutionary development”, my shrink says- “Normal” is just “average”, not cool. My latest diagnosis is “A.P.M”, Acute Premature Melancholia”, usually an affliction of late middle age, they think is genetic since Ty Senoir has had it all his life, too. You look if you might be A.P.M, too, Sky: that kind of pissed-off mopey look in your face like you swallowed something really gross and can’t spit it out. Joyce Carol Oates

For in America this season is decreed “family season”. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don’t have families! ) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year’s season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year’s season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life„ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie’s robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie’s frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: “Skyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you’ve just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you. Joyce Carol Oates

For in America this season is decreed “family season”. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don’t have families! ) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year’s season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year’s season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life„ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie’s robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie’s frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: “Skyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you’ve just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you”. . Joyce Carol Oates

Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of “playing”. A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which “neighborhoods” have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of “neighbor childrens” houses or play in “backyards”. In the absence of sidewalks in newer “gated” coummunities, children cannot “walk” to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A “playdate” is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers. In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you’ve been awaiting. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed. Joyce Carol Oates

Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash. Joyce Carol Oates

There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it. Joyce Carol Oates

In this way unwittingly the Widow-to-Be is assuring her husband’s death–his doom. Even as she believes she is behaving intelligently–“shrewdly” and “reasonably”–she is taking him to a teeming petri dish of lethal bacteria where within a week he will succumb to a virulent staph infection–a “hospital” infection acquired in the course of his treatment for pneumonia. Even as she is fantasizing that he will be home for dinner she is assuring that he will never return home. How unwitting, all Widows-to-Be who imagine that they are doing the right thing, in innocence and ignorance!. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self. Joyce Carol Oates

The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels ‘invisible’ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her ‘visibility’ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow… it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are ‘invisible’. Joyce Carol Oates

...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. Joyce Carol Oates

The dilemma is, in the United States, each penniless citizen believes that, with luck, he might become a millionaire; and so doesn't want to put restraints on "robber barons"-he might become one one day! Joyce Carol Oates

Silence rolled at me, in Joyce Carol Oates

FOXFIRE NEVER SAYS NEVER! By the time the kidnapped turquoise-and-chrome car overturns--turns and turns and turns! --in a snow-drifted field north of Tydeman's Corners Legs Sadovsky will have driven eleven miles from Eddy's Smoke Shop on Fairfax Avenue, six wild miles with the Highway Patrol cop in pursuit bearing up swiftly when the highway is clear and the girls are hysterical with excitement squealing and clutching one another thrown from side to side as Legs grimaces sighting the bridge ahead, it's one of those old-fashioned nightmare bridges with a steep narrow ramp, narrow floor made of planks but there's no time for hesitation Legs isn't going to use the brakes, she's shrewd, reasoning too that the cop will have to slow down, the fucker'll be cautious thus she'll have several seconds advantage won't she?--several seconds can make quite a difference in a contest like this so the Buick's rushing up the ramp, onto the bridge, the front wheels strike and spin and seem at first to be lifting in decorous surprise Oh! oh but astonishingly the car holds, it's a heavy machine of power that seems almost intelligent until flying off the bridge hitting a patch of slick part-melted ice the car swerves, now the rear wheels appear to be lifting, there's a moment when all effort ceases, all gravity ceases, the Buick a vessel of screams as it lifts, floats, it's being flung into space how weightless! Maddy's eyes are open now, she'll remember all her life this Now, now how without consequence! as the car hits the earth again, yet rebounds as if still weightless, turning, spinning, a machine bearing flesh, bones, girls' breaths plunging and sliding and rolling and skittering like a giant hard-shelled insect on its back, now righting itself again, now again on its back, crunching hard, snow shooting through the broken windows and the roof collapsing inward as if crushed by a giant hand upside-down and the motor still gunning as if it's frantic to escape, they're buried in a cocoon of bluish white and there's a sound of whimpering, panting, sobbing, a dog's puppyish yipping and a strong smell of urine and Legs is crying breathlessly half in anger half in exultation, caught there behind the wheel unable to turn, to look around, to see, "Nobody's dead--right?" Nobody's dead. Joyce Carol Oates

I am made to think, not for the first time, that in my writing I have plunged ahead-head-on, heedlessly one might say-or 'fearlessly'- into my own future: this time of utter raw anguished loss. Though I may have had, since adolescence, a kind of intellectual/literary precocity, I had not experienced much;nor would I experience much until I was well into middle age-the illnesses and deaths of my parents, this unexpected death of my husband. We play at paste till qualified for pearl says Emily Dickinson. Playing at paste is much of our early lives. And then, with the violence of a door slammed shut by wind rushing through a house, life catches up with us. Joyce Carol Oates

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

Lawrence is the supreme poet of Eros. No recriminations, no reproaches, no guilt, no 'morality'. For what's 'morality' but a leash around the neck? A noose? What's 'morality' but what other people want you to do, for their own, selfish, unstated purposes? Joyce Carol Oates

We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it. Joyce Carol Oates

Only where there is life can there be home. Joyce Carol Oates

This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just didn't pick up the phone. Joyce Carol Oates

Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them. Joyce Carol Oates

Truths are the last thing you learn about your family. By the time you learn, you're no longer their child. Joyce Carol Oates

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. Joyce Carol Oates

These are open secrets, so to speak. Of the kind we dare not articulate, for fear of wounding those close to us. Joyce Carol Oates

There are some secrets so toxic you can’t share. Especially if you love who it is you’d have to share with. Joyce Carol Oates

I feel very transparent in myself. I’m more of an observer. I’m interested in what’s going on. I’m not sure that I really have a personality. Some people think I do have a personality. I have a personality when I am with certain people – but when I’m not with them I don’t have that personality. I just sort of go back to resembling a transparent glass of water. Joyce Carol Oates

I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. ~ I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called “culture” — and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species. ~ Through the local or regional, through our individual voices, we work to create art that will speak to others who know nothing of us. In our very obliqueness to one another, an unexpected intimacy is born. . Joyce Carol Oates

The gym cat appears to those who will die. He is our totem." This thought came to me a few weeks ago. I shared it with no one of course. Joyce Carol Oates

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose. Joyce Carol Oates

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing. Joyce Carol Oates

Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind. Joyce Carol Oates

The days were brief and attenuated and the season appeared to be fixed - neither summer nor winter, spring nor fall. A thermal haze of inexpressible sweetness, though bearing tiny bits of grit or mica, had eased into the Valley from the industrial region to the north and there were nights when the sun set at the western horizon as if it were sinking through a porous red mass, and there were days when a hard-glaring moon like bone remained fixed in a single position, prominent in the sky. ("Family") . Joyce Carol Oates

A three-quarter moon, glowering bone, with a hint of something bruised, battered, scarred. The moon has endured more than anybody can know. Joyce Carol Oates

-So you don't believe we have souls I guess?" and Legs laughed and said, "Yeah probably we do but why's that mean we're gonna last forever? Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out? Joyce Carol Oates

A wet autumn morning, a garbage truck clattering down the street. The first snowfall of the season, blossom sized flakes falling languidly and melting on teh ground, a premature snow fall delicate as lace, rapidly melting. Joyce Carol Oates

Boxing has become America's tragic theater. Joyce Carol Oates

Like a turnip such a head could be blown away very easily. For where a man was weak, a woman has unmanned him. It would be a mercy to blow such a man away. Joyce Carol Oates

You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal. . Joyce Carol Oates

Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be. In running the mind flees with the body, the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms. Joyce Carol Oates

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” – Joyce Carol Oates

(..) I could "talk fast" -- that's to say, without hesitating, stammering -- most of the time -- but there were categories of words, sentiments, I could never say, they'd have stuck in my throat. The embarrassment of it even whispering-teasing to Legs for instance 'Yeah you're my heart too! ' or 'I love you' or 'I would die for you', nobody ever talked that way, mostly there was just my mother and me and we hardly talked at all. Joyce Carol Oates

Dorcas wasn't a fast walker. It was difficult for me to keep behind her. I tried to let others, joggers, and bicyclists, come between us. I followed her past a field where girls were playing soccer, and into the woods bordering Catamount Creek. The smell of pine needles underfoot was sharp, pungent. I seemed to know that I would always associate that smell with this afternoon, and with Dorcas. Joyce Carol Oates

It's where we go and what we do when we get there that tells us who we are. Joyce Carol Oates

Only when men are connected to large universal goals are they really happy-and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity. Joyce Carol Oates

The worst cynicism a belief in luck. Joyce Carol Oates

When you're fifty you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity-but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. Joyce Carol Oates