816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

He has made a show of being a devoted family man but his life has been carefully arranged so that he spends as little time with his family as possible.

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

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.

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.

(...) 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.

For there is the fear—a wise fear, I think: that if we speak just once to the dead, the dead will cleave to us in their desperate loneliness and never leave our sides.

Unbidden, Unwelcome, Yet unable to resist, I entered a stranger's life

A daydreamer is prepared for most things.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be