In love there are two things—bodies and words.

—Joyce Carol Oates

love words bodies

About Joyce Carol Oates

Portrait of Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and...

More quotations from Joyce Carol Oates

Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad—I could not bear to "outlive" them—for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.

—Joyce Carol Oates in A Widow's Story

love relationship parents Mom dad

People come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be.

—Joyce Carol Oates in and Flew Away

life people reason

The experience is there, the reality is there, but how to get at it? Everything I type turns into a lie simply because it is not the truth.

—Joyce Carol Oates

When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

—Joyce Carol Oates

life reality violence

A daydreamer is prepared for most things.

—Joyce Carol Oates

imagination preparation daydreaming

More quotations tagged with “words”

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

emotions words communication language intent

With words we govern men.

—Benjamin Disraeli

power words government

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

—Stephen King

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.

power words romance

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

—John Maynard Keynes

words thought wildness

History

22 Feb 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

In love there are two things - bodies and words.