Quotes By Person: Joyce Carol Oates

“Blood transforms the warm bath water
and, in it, I see weakly
that this was a mistake.
The razor's cut is not deep, nevertheless
the blood rushes out happily in the warm
water as if kin to it, the same
tender substance.

Rising
a new person
transformed with an icy
sense of error
I go to the sink and turn on cold water
which is not friendly to blood.
The cut is deeper than imagined.”

-Passing An Afternoon, Joyce Carol Oates

~

“Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. 'Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?' she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything.”

-Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates

~

“Then, by degrees, she'd realized, no, no, I am not like this at all, I am the person I always was, from the first, I don't need others to define me, it's in fact others who misdefine me.”

-Will You Always Love Me?, Joyce Carol Oates

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