More quotes by Joyce Carol Oates

"The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love."
"Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst."
"I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything."
"And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices."
"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."