Quote

Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.

Joyce Carol Oates

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joyce Carol Oates
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: June 16
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Lockport
New York
Imagine
Shimmering
Love
Trails
Observing
Soft
Behinds
Behind
Dead
Impossible

More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

Image
Whoever was stupid was beneath worry or thought you did not have to figure them out. This eliminated hundreds of people. In this life you had time only for a certain amount of thinking, and there was no need to waste any of it on people who were not threatening.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
It's impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James - and many more - without wanting to write, however entirely different one's writing will be.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
You cultivate the subconscious by meditation, by sitting in silence and by not trying to control your thoughts. Then go someplace where you haven't been before, or go for a walk, a run, and look for signs of grace-an epiphany, something that comes to you.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn't quite in focus.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
I don't know what marriages are like in general, but there are many things which I don't talk about with my husband. We discuss practical problems, but I wouldn't sit down with him and talk about the distant past. It's somewhat in contrast to other Americans, who feel that they have to confess things, but I'm really not like that.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Even as a young child, I was a lover of books and of the spaces in which, as indeed in a sacred temple, books might safely reside.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Nothing is accidental in the universe - this is one of my Laws of Physics - except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Dear girl! Life is addictive. Yet we must live.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
These are the moments for which we live.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
You can't deny Eros. Eros wills trike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. And the god of Eros will flow through you, as Lawrence says, in the 'perfect obliteration of blood consciousness.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.
Joyce Carol Oates
Image
Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.
Joyce Carol Oates