“ Men grow cold as girls grow oldAnd we all lose our charms in the end.How prettily Lorelei Lee sang these mordant lyrics! Joyce Carol Oates
“ Maidstone exerts a curious spell upon the observer: suggesting, in its somewhat blunt, foursquare architecture, and its towering chimneys and exceptionally tall, narrow, and brooding windows, frequent… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Maggots in corpses. He'd seen. Whitely churning, in the mouths of dead soldiers, where their noses had been, their ears and blasted-away jaws. Most of the soldiers had been men as young as he himself… Joyce Carol Oates
“ 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
“ Life is the horror, abortion or miscarriage is the redemption. As Sophocles said so beautifully, ‘Never to have been born is best, but once you’ve entered this world, return as quickly as possible to… 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
“ It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed—to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis! Joyce Carol Oates
“ In the throat, the male is as vulnerable as the female. Once the sharp points of the shears pierce his skin, puncture the artery, there will be no turning back for either of them. Joyce Carol Oates
“ In slow drowning waves the knowledge washed over Cressida, her professor did not think that she was so special after all. He didn't know her father Zeno. Was that it? Joyce Carol Oates
“ In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious—unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer’s life can be distressing—negativ… Joyce Carol Oates
“ In our household, which was essentially under an evil spell, my father 'Chaplin' was all the magic. A great man draws magic into himself, like reverse lightning. There's nothing to spare for anyone el… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Her favorite foods made her gag, like old friends she hadn’t seen in years turning up looking all wrong. Joyce Carol Oates
“ Fortunately, the clinical diagnosis ADD didn’t exist when I was a child, and restless children were not medicated, or I might have been narcotized at an early age, and my brain affected. (No one can t… Joyce Carol Oates
“ For, in movie logic, aesthetics has the authority of ethics: to be less than beautiful is sad, but to be willfully less than beautiful is immoral. Joyce Carol Oates
“ Burnaby bobbed to the surface of the water after a few minutes, seemingly unscathed as journalists would report. A universal cheer went up as the daredevil with the shaved, painted head swam toward th… Joyce Carol Oates
“ Asked by a journalist how he had felt after an unsuccessful election, Abraham Lincoln said, Like a little boy who stubbed his toe in the dark, he was too old to cry but it hurt too much to laugh. Joyce Carol Oates
“ And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness. Joyce Carol Oates
“ Yet the greening grasses and overarching elms and oaks, just beginning to come into leaf, gave the scene a picturesque air, like a fairy-tale dwelling; Joyce Carol Oates
“ Didn't thankdidn't wave goodbyedidn't flutter the air with kissesa mound of gifts unwrappedbed unmadeno appetitealways elsewherethough it was raining elsewherethough strangers peopled the streetsthoug… Joyce Carol Oates
“ You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There's a comfort in this fact perhaps. I want to think that there must be comfort in all facts we can't alter. Joyce Carol Oates
