The Falls Quotes

“Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“لا يمكنني التورط مع رجل لا يهمه أمري وأمر طفلتي وحياتنا معًا، أكثر من اهتمامه بغريب ... لا يمكنني التورط مع رجل لا يهمه إن عاش أو مات! يرمي بحياته مثل الزهر وكأن لا قيمة لها”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“She would become, through the years, a woman who expected the worst, to relieve herself of the anxiety of hope. She would become a woman of calm, fatalistic principles, anticipating her life with the equanimity of a weather forecaster.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“you had to have a deep, mysterious soul to want to destroy yourself. The shallower you are, the safer. Colborne”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“He understood the primitive, malevolent spell of The Falls: he was beginning to feel again the sinister attraction he’d felt years ago, as an adolescent, when his emotions were rawer, closer to the surface. Those feelings of dissolution, loss, panic, very like the sensation of falling in love against one’s will. The Falls! You can’t believe it can kill you. When it is pure spirit. After”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“no one knew what to do with Ariah Erskine, who refused to behave as others wished her to behave.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“And so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“She expected the worst from mankind, which allowed her to be pleasantly surprised, fairly often, when the worst failed to happen.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“You had to have a deep, mysterious soul to want to destroy yourself. The shallower you are, the safer.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Ever rising like the souls of the damned seeking salvation,” Ariah said to Dirk Burnaby, in one of her rare moments of noticing him. Her fixed, wistful smile made him shudder.)”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Yet within seconds she summoned her steely will, this will that so impressed Dirk Burnaby, for he’d never encountered anything like it in his life, establishing where she was, and why. The bad dream was outside her, in the world. She must conquer it there or nowhere.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“and much more interesting.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Mrs. Erskine struck him as fierce and plain and haughty as one of those straight-backed red-haired girl-women in certain of the watercolors of Winslow Homer.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“One thing it was not: love at first sight. He didn’t believe in such. He wasn’t a believer in romance, sentimental coincidences, “meanings” snatched out of the air. He certainly didn’t believe in destiny, he was a gambler by nature and you know that destiny is just chance you try to manipulate for your own profit. Yet”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“He’d never risk his life if he could avoid it. “I’d rather live, thank you.” In”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“It had given him a charge of entitlement and invincibility he would draw upon through life, like a limitless bank account.)”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Burnaby bobbed to the surface of the water after a few minutes, seemingly “unscathed” as journalists would report. A “universal cheer” went up as the daredevil with the shaved, painted head swam toward the base of Luna Island; would-be rescuers reached out for him even as, when Burnaby was less than ten feet from shore, a powerful undertow sucked him down into the swift, green-tinged water. Eyewitnesses would claim that, as he was sucked down, Burnaby cried, “Darling, goodbye! Kiss the baby for me!” to his young wife who watched helplessly, their eight-month infant in her arms, from a platform on Goat Island. That infant would one day be Dirk Burnaby’s father. The”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“REGINALD BURNABY THE GREAT (variously identified as a defrocked Roman Catholic priest from Galway, an ex-convict from Liverpool, if not an escaped convict from that seaport city)”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Marriage, family. What else is there? You had to grow up. You had to accept it.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Burnaby wasn’t a Christian but he behaved like a Christian is supposed to behave which made Colborne, a Christian, uncomfortable.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Foolish woman, don’t despair. My justice is My mercy. 5”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Corset,’ Mrs. Erskine? I don’t understand.” Because she was trussed up in one herself, she couldn’t comprehend how Ariah had escaped hers.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“You keep asking me that,” she said sharply. “No. I don’t care to notify anyone. I can’t bear a crowd of relatives around me. I threw away that damned corset in a trash can. I won’t return to that.” There”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“You don’t understand! Gilbert turned his back on me, but he wouldn’t have turned his back on God.” Ariah”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“She was standing with her thin arms lifted in a pose of crucifixion as the white satin gown with its myriad pearl buttons, tucks and pleats and ingenious lace trim, was fitted onto her like an exquisite straitjacket. Mrs. Littrell had insisted upon the corset, Ariah could scarcely breathe. I take thee Gilbert. My lawfully wedded husband. A sneeze would have shattered the corset, and the wedding. At police headquarters, the bride of the “fallen” man was clearly to blame. Ariah”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“But how is it justice, God? Why do I deserve this?” She waited. God declined to reply. How”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“He was sentimental about women. It infuriated him that any man, let alone a minister, could behave so selfishly on his honeymoon.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Yet The Falls exerted its malevolent spell, that never weakened. If you grew up in the Niagara region, you knew. Adolescence was the dangerous time. Most Niagara natives kept their distance from The Falls, so they were immune. But if you drifted too near, even out of intellectual curiosity, you were in danger: beginning to think thoughts unnatural to your personality as if the thunderous waters were thinking for you, depriving you of your will. Clyde”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“Ariah struck suddenly at her face with both fists. She wanted to pummel, blacken her eyes that had seen too much.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls

“You wear out. You see too much. Every breath hurts. The”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls