“ 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’… Joyce Carol Oates
“ How bizarre it seems to us, Hudson had been looking for a route to the Pacific Ocean, as his predecessor Christopher Columbus had been looking for a route to the East Indies . . . I thought The routes… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Hospital vigils inspire us to such nostalgia. Hospital vigils take place in slow-time during which the mind floats free, a frail balloon drifting into the sky as into infinity. Joyce Carol Oates
“ For his part, the stranger was drifting in Annabel’s direction, yet not very deliberately. As if, in some way, he were being drawn to her, by some (unconscious) motion or motive of Annabel herself. Wh… Joyce Carol Oates
“ During these mad dashes to the wall phone in the kitchen she hadn't time to fall but with fantastical grace and dexterity wrenched herself upright in midfall and continued running (dogs whimpering, ya… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Did you know, Marianne: how by breaking the code that day, you broke it forever? For us all? Joyce Carol Oates
“ Clearly, boxing's very image is repulsive to many people because it cannot be assimilated into what we wish to know about civilized man. In a technological society possessed of incalculably refined me… Joyce Carol Oates
“ But how is it justice, God? Why do I deserve this? She waited. God declined to reply. How Joyce Carol Oates
“ Bullshit! Li-ar! Your mother and father are dead like everybody else. Everybody is dead. Joyce Carol Oates
“ As long as you're in motion, your perspective is obscured. Only when you reach the summit and turn to look back, can you be at peace. Joyce Carol Oates
“ Ariah struck suddenly at her face with both fists. She wanted to pummel, blacken her eyes that had seen too much. Joyce Carol Oates
“ And we can read - there is always the prospect of escape, through books.Books are not a means of 'escape', Meta! Books are a means of knowledge, and of learning how to cope with the future. Joyce Carol Oates
“ And that's the insult of it, how always it comes back to a woman being a good mother in the world's eyes or a bad mother, how everything in a woman's life is funneled through her body between her legs… Joyce Carol Oates
“ An actress wants to be seen. An actress wants to be loved. By multitudes of people, not just one lone man. Joyce Carol Oates
“ A predatory bird with a great sharp beak and vicious talons—Paradox. To be in its grip is to suffer, yet so exquisitely, one might mistake the experience for a kind of ecstasy. Josiah Joyce Carol Oates
“ ; so too, her glazed ceramics and her macramé are interchangeable with those executed by her women friends in the area, who take courses at the Mill Brook Valley Arts Co-op and whose houses are gradua… Joyce Carol Oates
“ There's something about other people isn't there?--you'd like to know who they are?--you'd like to be them, maybe? People you never saw before and--my voice lifting in excitement, it's so strange how… Joyce Carol Oates
“ You had to have a deep, mysterious soul to want to destroy yourself. The shallower you are, the safer. Colborne Joyce Carol Oates
“ 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 Joyce Carol Oates
“ For politics is in its essence as Adams had said the 'systematic organiztion of hatred': either you were organized or you were not Joyce Carol Oates
