The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror Quotes

“It is a terrible thing to feel that you might break down, you might utter a confession that could not then be retrieved.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“All your life, you yearn to return to what has been. You yearn to return to those you have lost. You will do terrible things to return, which no one else can understand.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“All prices of all things—at least, useless beautiful things like rare books—are inherently absurd, rooted in the human imagination and in the all-too-human predilection to desperately want what others value highly, and to scorn what others fail to value.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“In dreams sometimes it is like this. I am lying very still, my arms and legs are numb or paralyzed. There is a medical term—peripheral neuropathy. A tingling sensation in fingers and toes that moves upward bringing with it a loss of feeling, a spreading numbness, a kind of amnesia of the body.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“From time to time somewhere in the house the lonely Siamese cat erupted in a high-pitched, piteous yowl, a cry of utter desolation and misery that chilled my blood, as if I had been torturing her, and was to blame for her suffering.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“the term “trauma” was not common usage. Like other adults of the era my parents believed that healing was a matter of not dwelling upon the past.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“At such times you give yourself over to His will. There is no opposition to God, there is only surrender.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“Rogar a Dios que sea bueno contigo porque lo que te aterroriza es que Dios no sea bueno contigo.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, El señor de las muñecas y otros cuentos de terror

“It is that time he cannot realize—he is still alive. He is laughing and his face is bright-glaring with happiness because he is alive and cannot imagine any time when he will be not-alive for (it is said) no animal can comprehend its own death.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“A career is not a life. Only a family is a life.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“For it has been revealed to me as a fact, that where the dull-essential nature of our lives is eliminated, such as age, identity, education, employment, place of residence, family ties, daily routine, etc., the thrilling-essential is revealed.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“It is the easiest tie to break—my Friend consoled me—the tie that was badly frayed to begin with.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror

“you cried, they tried to comfort you. But if you were stony faced they let you alone.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, The Doll-Master: And Other Tales of Terror