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"Deep down under where his heart resided, strangled up in thorny vines of guilt, anger, fear and longing, there lay something deeper in him, something that he couldn't see but she could."
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"So, now I've been to see a drug counselor who told me I need to lay off the drugs and talk about my feelings, and a shrink who heard what I had to say and immediately put me on drugs."

"Human nature is so complicated. Those who have little, want a lot. Those who have a lot, think others have more. Those who lose, blame others for the loss."

"We all talk to ourselves. Those we call mad just talk a little louder."

"I've always felt that the best whips and chains are in the mind. With a little creativity, the physical ones are hardly necessary."

"Children inherit their parents' madness."

"And Clifford the same. All that talk! All that writing! All that wild struggling to push himself forwards! It was just insanity. And it was getting worse, really maniacal.Connie felt washed-out with fear. But at least, Clifford was shifting his grip from her on to Mrs Bolton. He did not know it. Like many insane people, his insanity might be measured by the things he was not aware of, the great desert tracts in his consciousness."

"I have studied humans for a small eternity. Intent infuses their every movement. Road maps to their inner navigation, plastered all over their skin. Born to be slaves."

"Nothing humbles a beautiful woman better than not being wanted by a man whose girlfriend or wife is ugly (or not as beautiful as she is)."

"That which he projects ahead of him as his ideal, is merely his substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood - the time when he was his own ideal."

"Sex doesn't satisfy for a lifetime, the more you have it, the more you want it. And the more you have it, the more you die out."
Explore more quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

"We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves unable to see that here now this very moment is sacred but once it's gone-its value is incontestable."

"A three-quarter moon, glowering bone, with a hint of something bruised, battered, scarred. The moon has endured more than anybody can know."

"I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it."

"Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding."

"Like a turnip such a head could be blown away very easily. For where a man was weak, a woman has unmanned him. It would be a mercy to blow such a man away."

"Primarily, 'Black Girl/White Girl' is the story of two very different, yet somehow 'fated' girls; for Genna, her 'friendship' with Minette is the most haunting of her life, though it is one-sided and ends in tragedy."

"A wet autumn morning, a garbage truck clattering down the street. The first snowfall of the season, blossom sized flakes falling languidly and melting on teh ground, a premature snow fall delicate as lace, rapidly melting."

"The demon blood inside me burned my soul to ashes long ago.I am a monster who once dreamed he was a man. Never mistakeme again."

"Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing."
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