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Book: A Widow's Story
Quotes of Book: A Widow's Story

Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious-unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer's life can be distressing-negative reviews, rejections by magazines, difficulties with editors, publishers, book designers-disappointment with one's own work, on a daily/hourly basis!-it seemed to me a very good idea to shield Ray from this side of my life as much as I could. For what is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too?
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
stroke recently. A friend at least a decade"
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
Suicide is in fact a consoling thought. Suicide is the secret door by which you can exit the world at any time-it's wholly up to you. For who can prevent you, if suicide is truly your wish? Who has the moral authority,
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
How exhausted I am suddenly!-though this has been Ray's best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling-almost-exhilarated.
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
The coolly calibrated manipulation of the credulous American public, by an administration bent upon stoking paranoid patriotism!
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
For writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom.
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
Nor do I like being told upsetting news-unless there is a good reason. I can't help but feel that there is an element of cruelty, if not sadism, in friends telling one another upsetting things for no reason except to observe their reactions.
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
Still, I am angry with him. I am very angry with him. With my poor dead defenseless husband, I am furious as I was rarely-perhaps never-furious with him, in life. How can I forgive you, you've ruined both our lives.
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
She will speculate that she didn't fully know her husband-this will give her leverage to seek him, to come to know him. It will keep her husband "alive" in her memory-elusive, teasing.
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
Hospital vigils inspire us to such nostalgia. Hospital vigils take place in slow-time during which the mind floats free, a frail balloon drifting into the sky as into infinity.
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
It is utterly naive, futile, uninformed-to think that our species is exceptional. So designated to master the beasts of the Earth, as in the Book of Genesis!
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Joyce Carol Oates _ A Widow's Story
Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers-their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges-But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight-
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