Quotessence
Home / Authors / Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingIfsPeopleThinkingArtKnowsNovelMightWayBookStoriesVoiceMenSelfWorldFeelsReadingSeemsHumansKind

Famous Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

“Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?”

IfsKnowsLongDoeSelfMatterEnoughPastReadingLostSourceMouthsRiversConnectionsMilesDoes It MatterOld Self
Book:Foxfire: confessions of a girl gang
Create image

“For the first time driving that day I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rushing through the emptiness of space. Spinning on its axis but they say you don't feel it, you can't experience it. But to feel it is to be scared and happy at once and to know that nothing matters but that you do what you want to do and what you do you are. And I knew I was moving into the future. There is not PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or ever to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.”

KnowsWantFeelsFirstsMatterEarthPastMovingSpaceFirst TimeScaredWhat You WantDrivingEmptinessSpinningRushingAxesNothing Matters
Author:Joyce Carol Oates
Create image

“I do what I want to do. It was a brash statement of(her)girlhood. Now she was an adult, the boast seemed quaint. For rarely do you know what you want. Even after you've done it you can't say clearly if that was what you'd wanted or just something that happened to you, like weather.”

IfsKnowsWantDoneWantedHappenedAdultsWhat You WantStatementsWeatherDo You KnowBoastQuaintGirlhoodBrash
Book:I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories
Create image

“There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.”

KnowsFirstsRememberHoursGriefKnownForeverMinutesEventsEvidenceBasesSeriesBereavementDevastationInconsequential
Author:Joyce Carol Oates
Create image