American Appetites Quotes

“Not what the mind sees, but what the mind imagines the eye must see.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, American Appetites

“We never have time, do we, for all that we don’t exactly want to do.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, American Appetites: A Classic of American Literature – Gripping Thriller of Privilege and Murder

“Ian...paused for a moment on the threshold and stared, overcome by a sudden sense of confronting, not the men and women who were his friends, but a gathering of souls. How strange we are to one another, he thought. Each soul was encased in flesh, bound by an envelope of skin, turned inward, immersed in silence. The soul was light, or flame--its heat small, ephemeral, easily extinguished. Ian stared and felt afraid: yet felt, in that instant, an uncanny happiness. He saw himself so brotherly, so deeply kindred to them all--these souls, these separate beings, whom he did not know.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, American Appetites

“and both men listened as if hearing it for the first time, as we so frequently listen, in such circumstances, to tales whose outcomes we already know, or have already been told us by our friends.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, American Appetites: A Classic of American Literature – Gripping Thriller of Privilege and Murder

“What is destiny—a mechanical fact, a theoretical possibility, a concept, a superstition, a mere word? Ian McCullough was inclined to think one or another of these depending upon his mood. Destiny, the seemingly benign verso of fate.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, American Appetites: A Classic of American Literature – Gripping Thriller of Privilege and Murder

“Everything is entirely in Nature, and Nature is entire in everything. She has her center in every brute. —SCHOPENHAUER The”
― Joyce Carol Oates, American Appetites: A Classic of American Literature – Gripping Thriller of Privilege and Murder