Black Water Quotes

“She wasn't in love but she would love him, if that would save her.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“How crucial for us to rehearse the future, in words.

Never to doubt that you will live to utter them.

Never to doubt that you will tell your story.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“You love the life you've lived because it is yours.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“A man will reveal his true self, or so it seems, on the tennis court.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing - how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles', your 'ideals' - and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“for politics is in its essence as Adams had said the 'systematic organiztion of hatred': either you were organized or you were not”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“You love the life you've lived, there is no other.
You love the life you've lived, you're an American girl. You believe you have chosen it.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“As he kissed her those several times, kissing, sucking, groping as if, though they were standing fully clothed on a beach that, though not very populated, was nonetheless not deserted, he was in an agony to find a way into her, she felt the jolt of desire: not her desire, but the man's. As, since girlhood, kissing and being kissed, Kelly Kelleher had always felt, not her own, but the other's, the male's, desire. Quick and galvanizing as an electric shock.
Feeling too, once she caught her breath, that familiar wave of anxiety, guilt—I've made you want me, now I can't refuse you.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“Why had she hesitated to say they were lost, why hadn't she told him to turn the car around, to reverse their course, oh please!—but she had not dared offend him.
The black water was her fault, she knew. You just don't want to offend them. Even the nice ones.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“It was a principle of hers that you must never say anything about another person you would not say in that person's presence.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“When her lover had loved her she'd been beautiful. When she'd been beautiful her lover had lover her. It was a simple proposition, a seemingly tautological proposition, yet it resisted full comprehension.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“Near the point of impact, time accelerates to the speed of light.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“. . . her employer Carl Spader had a saying:

You're in politics, you're an optimist.

You're no longer an optimist, you're no longer in politics.

You're no longer an optimist, you're dead.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

“[...] misinterpreting her silence for a broken heart, her cynicism about men for depression, ir despondency [...]”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water