816 Quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can't escape. Life was easier then. You just didn't pick up the phone.

Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them.

The fetus wished to live. Stubbornly, sometimes astonishingly-the fetus struggled to live. But the power of its life-or its death-had to reside with the mother. No other alternative was possible.

... such speculation is like staring into the hot white sun. you know the sun is there but you can't see a thing.

Dominique (who, like other Catamount girls, had a cache of pills for every occasion) offered me a bennie- Benzedrine?- to elevate my spirits. Adamantly I told her, No thanks! I wanted to face what's called reality with my eyes open.I've made that a principle for my life. Sometimes I wonder if this has been a wise decision.

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

A man is fearful of lonely in a woman

We begin as children imagining and fearing ghosts. By degrees, through our long lives, we come to be the very ghosts inhabiting the lost landscapes of our childhood.

Sick?--What's sick? Who is 'well'? Do you imagine, if you or I were minutely examined, we would be one hundred percent 'well'?