DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense Quotes

“He has made a show of being a devoted family man but his life has been carefully arranged so that he spends as little time with his family as possible.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“It is deflating to realize that you are not privileged over the mold in your showerhead.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“How like science fiction our lives are, she thinks. The alternate universe in which, innocently, ignorantly, we continue to exist as we'd been, unaware that, in another universe, we'd have ceased to be.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“In marriage, one plus one is more than the sum of two. But sometimes in a marriage, one plus one is less than the sum of two.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“[F]or, living our lives, as our bodies live for us, we are not at all clockwork; we do not feel ourselves to be clockwork; each second is new to us, quicksilver and unexpected, undefined.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“the mirror above the bureau—a flushed blurred face. I had learned to look quickly away from that face for so often I hated what I saw.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Dis Mem Ber: And Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“Silence has gathered around me like a thick, viscous water filling in a muddy footprint. Early evening, swollen sky like an eye that”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Dis Mem Ber: And Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“if a man hurts you, and you show that hurt, and your eyes lock with his, he will never forgive you. For always you will be the girl he has hurt, which means you are the girl he can always hurt again. Mr.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Dis Mem Ber: And Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“Mom’s new husband was eleven years older than Mom. He had been Mom’s boss at the Buick dealership where she’d worked until they were married, and you could see that he was still Mom’s boss—the way he spoke to her, not exactly giving orders, never forgetting to say Please but in a tone of voice that meant there was no negotiating. Of”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Dis Mem Ber: And Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“Our 182-passenger Boeing Classic this morning is under the able command of Captain Hiram Slatt, discharged from service in the United States Air Force mission in Afghanistan after six heroic deployments and now returned, following a restorative sabbatical at the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Wheeling, West Virginia, to his “first love”—civilian piloting for North American Airways. Captain Slatt has informed us that, once we are cleared for takeoff, our flying time will be between approximately seventeen and twenty-two hours depending upon ever-shifting Pacific Ocean air currents and the ability of our seasoned Classic 878 to withstand gale-force winds of 90 knots roaring “like a vast army of demons” (in Captain Slatt’s colorful terminology) over the Arctic Circle. As you have perhaps noticed Flight 443 is a full—i.e., “overbooked”—flight. Actually most North American Airways flights are overbooked—it is Airways protocol to persist in assuming that a certain percentage of passengers will simply fail to show up at the gate having somehow expired, or disappeared, en route. For those of you who boarded with tickets for seats already taken—North American Airways apologizes for this unforeseeable development. We have dealt with the emergency situation by assigning seats in four lavatories as well as in the hold and in designated areas of the overhead bin. Therefore our request to passengers in Economy Plus, Economy, and Economy Minus is that you force your carry-ons beneath the seat in front of you; and what cannot be crammed into that space, or in the overhead bin, if no one is occupying the overhead bin, you must grip securely on your lap for the duration of the flight. Passengers in First Class may give their drink orders now. SECURITY:”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Dis Mem Ber: And Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense