816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

It is a terrible thing to feel that you might break down, you might utter a confession that could not then be retrieved.

Words are like wild birds – they will come when they wish, not when they are bidden.

From Mother you will inherit the belief that you can journey to your fate, there’s a place to be located on a map that’s destiny. If only you can get there. If it isn’t too late. If no one stops you.

How alone this was going to be.

At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There’s something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

What is destiny – a mechanical fact, a theoretical possibility, a concept, a superstition, a mere word? Ian McCullough was inclined to think one or another of these depending upon his mood. Destiny, the seemingly benign verso of fate.

Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers – their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges – But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight –.

You have hardened your heart against your “American cousin.” It was courageous in the memoir to state so clearly how you had to harden your heart against so much, to survive. Americans believe that suffering makes saints of us, which is a joke. Still I realize you have no time for me in your life now. There is no “purpose” to me. Even.

In love there are two things – bodies and words.