Thursday, May 30, 2013
Favourite Quotes (from yet another favourite author)
Joyce Carol Oates tops my three favourite fiction writers chart. I have never met a more versatile writer who could write with so much flair and eloquence in a variation of styles spanning a few different genres. She is a true master (/mistress) of modern English Literature.
Her ability to connect with readers through her mastery of her tools- words written with such brutal honesty of the human experience has made me a great fan of her works. I hold the utmost respect for this female author.
Below are some of my favourite quotes that resonates well and hits the spot exactly in summing up my own thoughts on those fleeting moments that I experienced in different aspects of my life...
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On Writing:
“Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.”
― Joyce Carol Oates
― Joyce Carol Oates
“The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're
reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity.
When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously
directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the
reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals
to me.”
― Joyce Carol Oates
“Exotic: meaning you're "desired."
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.”
In those quiet moments of introspection:
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On flirtation, flings, romantic encounters, intimacy & all that mambo jumbo:
“It feels good, honey, but it isn't love.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, You Must Remember This
― Joyce Carol Oates, You Must Remember This
“Adriana loved even the rank animal smell of the man's body, her
sweat-slicked breasts and belly flattened beneath him, and her arms and
legs clutching him as a drowning woman might clutch another person to
save her life. Don't don't don't don't leave me. DON'T LEAVE ME. As in
animal copulation the frenzy is to be locked together not out of
sentiment or choice but physical compulsion. As if bolts of electric
current ran through both their bodies and would only release them from
each other when it ceased.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Faithless
“Exotic: meaning you're "desired."
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde
***
In those quiet moments of introspection:
“you're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths
revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent
minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary
otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to
discover their beauty, you tell yourself.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Small Avalanches and Other Stories
“Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to
remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a
primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we
must live.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Faithless
