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Joyce Carol Oates

"That I was sleeping at a time when my husband was dying is so horrible a thought, I can't confront it."

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"That I was sleeping at a time when my husband was dying is so horrible a thought, I can't confront it."

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Amber Hurdle

"How now! Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Lady Macbeth."

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Amber Hurdle

"The Wrong we have Done, Thought, or Intended Will wreak its Vengeance onOur SOULS."

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Amber Hurdle

"Consider guilt like a street sign that warns of rough roads ahead if you don't make a u-turn."

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Amber Hurdle

"This feeling of guilt is your conscience calling your attention to the higher road, and your heart wishing you had taken it."

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Amber Hurdle

"How blunt are all the arrows of thy quiver in comparison with those of guilt."

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Amber Hurdle

"It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed."

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Amber Hurdle

"I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt."

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Amber Hurdle

"There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good."

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Amber Hurdle

"Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway."

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Amber Hurdle

"What is guilt? Guilt is the pledge drive constantly hammering in our heads that keeps us from fully enjoying the show. Guilt is the reason they put the articles in Playboy."

Explore more quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

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Joyce Carol Oates
"Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart."
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Joyce Carol Oates
"Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose."
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Joyce Carol Oates
"Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them."
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Joyce Carol Oates
"There are some secrets so toxic you can't share. Especially if you love who it is you'd have to share with."
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Joyce Carol Oates
"Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions."
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Joyce Carol Oates
"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."
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Joyce Carol Oates
"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."
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Joyce Carol Oates
"So you don't believe we have souls I guess?' and Legs laughed and said, 'Yeah probably we do but why's that mean we're gonna last forever? Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?'"
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Joyce Carol Oates
"It had seemed to me an elegant nightmare concoction made by adults for adults, to further the aims and fantasies of adults, and what have children to do with such things?"
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Joyce Carol Oates
"We are stimulated to emotional response, not by works that confirm our sense of the world, but by works that challenge it."
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