Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren’t reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there’s nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it.

That's the only way that I can figure out how to live, is to say, "Well, I don't know what this adds up to, but I can do the best I can."

Success is always something that you have to recover from.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

No one ever tells you what the grieving process is going to be like. The process of losing a parent or ending a show or vocal injuries - they all bring on their own special breed of dismay... You just have to ride the wave. You don't have any other choice.

There have been bumps, but everything has happened for a reason - maybe apart from the loss of some loved ones - and we have always tried to find a positive from it.

Today, I don't have any psychological scars, because I am a realist and an optimist. After all, I can't lose my legs twice.

They always say, 'Time heals.' But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before.

We all understand loss. It's about what you do with that.

You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is.

In life, there's a lot that I'm afraid of. Death is always scary. My sister passed away. I'm not scared to die, so much as I was scared to not have her in my life, and it took a long time for me to reconcile that. There are fears everyday, and things that I'm afraid of. I fear everything, but I keep going.

I know I can do it," Todd Downey said, helping himself to another ear of corn from the steaming bowl. "I'm sure that in time her death will be a mystery, even to me.

You can’t control every contingency. You have to accept that. Let it scare you. Trust that it’ll be okay anyway.

Life doesn't care about your vision. You just gotta roll with it.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

You learn not to mourn every little thing out here, or you’d never, ever stop grieving.

It's always been hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.

I'm not sure anyone's life turns out exactly the way they imagine. All we can do is to try to make the best of it. Even when it seems impossible.

9/11 just seemed to come out of the blue. And there were people asking questions, but then there were no answers. At some point, it just turned into, "We've got to do what we've got to do." And I think those are the moments when you grow, when you get the opportunity to try to figure out, exactly as you said, what price are you paying, and if it's worth that price.

It’s like in soccer: you have to deal with the penalties where they fall; you can’t choose where they’re going to land. Life is like that, and you have to deal with it even if you don’t like it.

Losing a basketball game hurts but when you see what you've been through, you look on it and say well if this is the worst thing that can happen to me, then I'm okay.

I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life; they merely get used to it.

But grief still has to be worked through. It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down. Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.