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"A broken heart is something even I can't protect you from. I've been alone for so long, and believe me, all that does is provide a false sense of security. Being alone doesn't erase the deep yearning that exists in all of us. We are not solitary creatures. You have to love and open your heart. If not, what is it we are trying to save? When it swallows you whole, remember it means you've lived."
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"The love of a half dead heart will keep you half alive."

"Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust."

"Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward."

"And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart."
Explore more quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

"I feel very transparent in myself. I'm more of an observer. I'm interested in what's going on. I'm not sure that I really have a personality. Some people think I do have a personality. I have a personality when I am with certain people - but when I'm not with them I don't have that personality. I just sort of go back to resembling a transparent glass of water."

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

"I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life."

"How strange it is, to be walking away. Is it possible that I am really going to leave Ray-here? Is it possible that he won't be coming home with me in another day or two, as we'd planned? Such a thought is too profound for me to grasp. It's like fitting a large unwieldy object in a small space. My brain hurts, trying to contain it."

"Only when men are connected to large universal goals are they really happy-and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity."

"This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash."

"You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source."

"I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything's going to fall apart."

"As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise."
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