816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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.

Her problem wasn’t she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn’t a blonde and she wasn’t dumb.

God’s blessing is not always to be distinguished from His wrath.

It’s one of those secrets that’s embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students.

Especially she dreaded the isolation of the swimmer, amid propelled and splashing figures yet she was isolated, always one isolated in the water where thoughts await like froth on the surface of the water that smelled like chemicals.

Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the ‘self’ see the ‘self’ with any objectivity?

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

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.

Then the noise faded and Legs squinted up at the sky, the moon so bright you’d never think it could be merely rock like the earth’s common rock and lifeless, merely reflected light from an invisible sun and not a powerful living light of its own...