Joyce Carol Oates: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.”

“I had forgotten that time wasn't fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. I had forgotten that even misery can end.”

“If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything.”

“She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.”

“Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.”

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

“Death is just the last scene of the last act.”

“Of our hurts we make monuments of survival. If we survive.”

“My self is all to me. I don't have any need of you.”

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework — you can still be writing, because you have that space.”

“We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.”

“Which is why we saymeaning”

“It feels good, honey, but it isn't love.”

“How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.”

“I could EAT YOUR HEART & asshole you'd never know it.”

“Exotic: meaning you're "desired."
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.”

“I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul.”

“Her wish to die was as pervasive as a dial tone: you lift the receiver, it's always there.”

“The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct”