We Were the Mulvaneys Quotes

“In a family, what isn't spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Marianne laughed. But you can’t disappoint me! I don’t love you.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Oh, it’s a terrible, cruel thing—first you’re young, and that takes up such a long time you think it’s forever, then suddenly you’re not young, and you never get used to it—and, oh dear, there’s just the one way out.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Did you know, Marianne: how by breaking the code that day, you broke it forever? For us all?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Memory blurs, that’s the point. If memory didn’t blur you wouldn’t have the fool’s courage to do things again, again, again that tear you apart.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“I believe in uttering the truth, even if it hurts. Particularly if it hurts.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“In that way you recall, suddenly, sharply, in daylight, a trace of a dream of the previous night--but even as you recall it, it begins to fade.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“P.J. said, "That's true about any statement we make, isn't it? We never tell as much as we know."
"Right! So We're lying. So almost every statement is a lie, we can't help it."
"Yeah. But some statements are more lies than others.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Thinking of such things like they’d happened years ago already and not just a few weeks back. For once life begins to accelerate it goes faster and faster.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“During these mad dashes to the wall phone in the kitchen she hadn't time to fall but with fantastical grace and dexterity wrenched herself upright in midfall and continued running (dogs whimpering, yapping hysterically in her wake, cats scattering wide-eyed and plume-tailed) before the telephone ceased it's querulous ringing--though frequently she was greeted with nothing more than a derisive dial tone, in any case.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“And so it became a household of silence as if in the aftermath of a violent detonation.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“No one would be able to name what had happened or would wish to name it. Rape was a word that came not be spoken at High Point Farm.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Out of obscurity I came. To obscurity I can return.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“It struck her to the heart, left her weak, disoriented, that, to Michael Mulvaney, after all, his family wasn’t quite enough.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“It simply fell from him, like a heavy overcoat he'd shrugged off, no longer needing its warmth or bulk to protect him.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“She had never been drunk before, but believed that that was what had happened to her.

She'd been drinking something made of orange juice and she'd been warned, but had not listened or could not remember having listened, and could not remember who'd warned her.

She did not wish to name any names and to involve her friends or anyone for no one was to blame except possibly herself.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“The sky resembled shattered oyster shells ribboned with flame in the west, but at ground level, you could almost see (sometimes Mananne had stared out the window of her bedroom, observing) how shadows lifted from the snowy contours of the land, like living things.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Well, no. Marianne thought there could be lots worse.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Love you in that cheerleader’s costume. Last Friday. You didn’t see me I guess. But I was there.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Della Rae was a pig and she was smashed out of her skull and you didn’t want to think about it,”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“Just something that happened.’” Judd said, “It’s the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and—no one knows how to fix it.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“You don’t know what your story is going to be until looking back.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“first you’re young, and that takes up such a long time you think it’s forever, then suddenly you’re not young, and you never get used to it—”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“In a family, what isn’t spoken is what you listen for. But the noise of a family is to drown it out.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“But this document isn’t a confession. Not at all. I’ve come to think of it as a family album. The kind my mom never kept, absolute truth-telling. The kind no one’s mom keeps. But if you’ve been a child in any family you’ve been keeping such an album in memory and conjecture and yearning, and it’s a life’s work, it may be the great and only work of your life.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“What is a family, after all, except memories?—haphazard and precious as the contents of a catchall drawer in the kitchen”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“was in love with Briscoe”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys