Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

It is the human wish to be told lies that keep us as primitive morally and socially as we are. I am persuaded that a lie grounded in human desire is too powerful for mere reason to kill.

As a species, we tend to lie quite a bit - to ourselves and to each other. It's a primate thing. So, a reason to go into a career in science and technology, or to learn more about these subjects, is to become a more powerful person.

I'm kind of like a combination of a red herring and a fake-out.

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,- The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

People don't really want reality. They want theater, and that's different.

Looks are like honey: They'll attract flies, bees, bears, but they won't necessarily keep them.

People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.

The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished.

I think that human beings, even the ones who are sometimes hurting you, are often very, very confused at their center. Even people who are doing things that are nefarious - it's often out of confusion. I know that it's tough to be a human whether you're good or bad. I'm acutely aware of that. If that comes through, then I'm really grateful.

People accept a representation in which the elements of wish and fantasy are purposely included but which nevertheless proclaims to represent "the past" and to serve as a guide-rule for life, thereby hopelessly confusing the spheres of knowledge and will.

Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.

Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next.

And if you ever do a survey, you'll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even.

Misdirection is one of my strengths.

Noise is an easy thing to hide behind. If you make a lot of noise and shout behind that, nobody can tell what you're singing.

Truth was funny, because it was an insistent thing, maybe as powerful and insistent as some force of nature, the push of water or wind. You could keep it out only so long, but it had its own will and its own needs, and maybe you could keep it at bay with lies, but not for long, not for always.

I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away. I'm looking for the truth." And so it goes away. Puzzling.

Love was a rare thing, easily confused with a million other things, and if anybody knew this to be true it was him.

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

Maybe we all just want to feel special, even for a little while, to be fooled for a bit into feeling something besides the truth of our own ordinariness.

I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.