It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.

- Joyce Carol Oates

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

- 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.

- Joyce Carol Oates

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

- Joyce Carol Oates

I never change, I simply become more myself.

- Joyce Carol Oates

In love there are two things - bodies and words.

- Joyce Carol Oates

And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make o…

- Joyce Carol Oates

There is nothing "ordinary" about reality.

- Joyce Carol Oates

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

- Joyce Carol Oates