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

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

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

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

—Joyce Carol Oates

darkness desert night

More quotations tagged with “parents”

Don't simply settle for what your parents had. You can go further than that. You can do more, have more, be more.

—Joel Osteen in Your Best Life Now

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

The portrait of my parents is a complicated one, but lovingly drawn.

—Joyce Maynard

Parents are never as bad as kids think they are.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

History

2 Nov 2018 Added