Babysitter Quotes

“At what point in a marriage, Hannah thought, do you begin to see the other? When does the other begin to see you? Wondering who this person is, why you are together?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“Where do the missing go, when they disappear? For surely the missing are not missing to themselves, only to others.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“In the house Ismelda was vacuuming, cleaning rooms that are already clean, the roar of the vacuum abrasive to the nerves but if Hannah were to tell her please never mind, don’t bother, you just vacuumed yesterday, Ismelda will blink at her employer in surprise, alarm; too much effort to try to explain and then, subsequently, Ismelda will neglect parts of the house that need daily cleaning like the kitchen floor and Wes will notice, for Wes invariably does notice such neglect. Hannah, what the hell? Why is the floor sticky? Or, Hannah? These shirts are poorly ironed.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“Suburban life: a (thrumming, warmth-generating) hive.

Family life: small smug hive within a hive.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“The female body, stark-white, slovenly. At its core a hungry mouth that can never sate its hunger.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“We make our own luck, kids. Excelsior!”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“So long you’d taken for granted that time is an infinite supply to be used as you wish, dipped into, measured by the calendar, the clock, and the watch, now you realize that time is the river rushing you along heedless of your wishes.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“Each (involuntary) (voluntary) action of ours leads to (a) death, inevitably. The only variant is when.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“How frail the vessel—family. How desperate to keep family from pitching into the rough, devastating waters of oblivion, a frail vessel held together by love. And what is love but emotion. And what is emotion but a wisp of smoke, a motion of the air, invisible.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“The curse of the female, to so badly need love.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter

“Fascinating to Hannah, who has constructed her life as a means of exploiting her own passivity, to be forced to see how free she is: how alert, excited, aroused and aware and in a state of anticipation she really is, and not “fated.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Babysitter