“Exotic: meaning you're "desired."
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Beauty is a question of optics. All sight is illusion.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“For what is delusion but the prelude to hurt. And what is hurt but the prelude to rage.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe's masterpiece? why Monroe's most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? why when Marilyn had killed her baby? why when Marilyn had killed her babies? why did the world want to fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to fuck fuck fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to jam itself to the bloody hilt like a great tumescent sword in Marilyn? was it a riddle? was it a warning? was it just another joke? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do nobody else but you nobody else but you nobody else”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Dear girl! Life is addictive. Yet we must live.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Ohhhhh."
A lush-bodied girl in the prime of her physical beauty. In an ivory georgette-crepe sundress with a halter top that gathers her breasts up in soft undulating folds of the fabric. She's standing with bare legs apart on a New York subway grating. Her blond head is thrown rapturously back as an updraft lifts her full, flaring skirt, exposing white cotton panties. White cotton! The ivory-crepe sundress is floating and filmy as magic. The dress is magic. Without the dress the girl would be female meat, raw and exposed.
She's not thinking such a thought! Not her.
She's an American girl healthy and clean as a Band-Aid. She's never had a soiled or a sulky thought. She's never had a melancholy thought. She's never had a savage thought. She's never had a desperate thought. She's never had an un-American thought. In the papery-thin sundress she's a nurse with tender hands. A nurse with luscious mouth. Sturdy thighs, bountiful breasts, tiny folds of baby fat at her armpits. She's laughing and squealing like a four year-old as another updraft lifts her skirt. Dimpled knees, a dancer's strong legs. This husky healthy girl. The shoulders, arms, breasts belong to a fully mature woman but the face is a girl's face. Shivering in New York City mid-summer as subway steam lifts her skirt like a lover's quickened breath.
"Oh! Ohhhhh."
It's nighttime in Manhattan, Lexington Avenue at 51st Street. Yet the white-white lights exude the heat of midday. The goddess of love has been standing like this, legs apart, in spike-heeled white sandals so steep and so tight they've permanently disfigured her smallest toes, for hours. She's been squealing and laughing, her mouth aches. There's a gathering pool of darkness at the back of her head like tarry water. Her scalp and her pubis burn from the morning's peroxide applications. The Girl with No Name. The glaring-white lights focus upon her, upon her alone, blond squealing, blond laughter, blond Venus, blond insomnia, blond smooth-shaven legs apart and blond hands fluttering in a futile effort to keep her skirt from lifting to reveal white cotton American-girl panties and the shadow, just the shadow, of the bleached crotch.
"Ohhhhhh."
Now she's hugging herself beneath her big bountiful breasts. Her eyelids fluttering. Between the legs, you can trust she's clean. She's not a dirty girl, nothing foreign or exotic. She's an American slash in the flesh. That emptiness. Guaranteed. She's been scooped out, drained clean, no scar tissue to interfere with your pleasure, and no odor. Especially no odor. The Girl with No Name, the girl with no memory. She has not lived long and she will not live long.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Your punishment if you're a woman. Not loved enough.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“I'm nobody's daughter now. I'm through with that.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Yet I will make you all love me and I will punish myself to spite your love.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“All actors are whores.
They want only one thing: to seduce you.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Yet there was something gratifyingly real about being called a bitch, a whore, a blond tramp. Where so much was a dreamy haze, anything promising to be real was bracing.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“I would know of myself through the witnessing and naming of others. As Jesus in the Gospels is only seen and spoken of and recorded by others. I would know my existence and the value of that existence through others' eyes, which I believed I could trust as I could not trust my own.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Know what 'celebrity' is kid? Being paid to bullshit the rest of your natural life.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“As if whoever it was held that camera was her closest friend. Or maybe it was the camera that was her closest friend.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“An actress wants to be seen. An actress wants to be loved. By multitudes of people, not just one lone man.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Acting is the loneliest profession I know.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“I live now for my work. I live for my work. I live only for my work. One day I will do work deserving of my talent & desire. One day. This I pledge. This I vow. I want you to love me for my work. But if you don't love me I can't continue my work. So please love me! - so I can continue my work. I am trapped here! I am trapped in this blond mannequin with the face. I can only breathe through that face! Those nostrils! That mouth! Help me to be perfect. If God was in us, we would be perfect. God is not in us, we know this for we are not perfect. I don't want money & fame. I want only to be perfect. The blond mannequin Monroe is me & is not me. She is not me. She is what I was born. Yes I want you to love her. So you will love me. Oh I want to love you! Where are you? I look, I look & there is no one there.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“That glass sliver in the heart. Amid a fluttery-delicious Benzedrine rush, virtually every remark made to you is freighted with destiny, a sweet-painful stab in the heart. And Benzedrine and champagne, what a combination! The Blond Actress was only just discovering what everybody else in Hollywood knew.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“But so like Hollywood people, who played at the emotions they truly felt. Or maybe the emotions they truly felt could only be expressed in play?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“In our household, which was essentially under an evil spell, my father 'Chaplin' was all the magic. A great man draws magic into himself, like reverse lightning. There's nothing to spare for anyone else.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“unless it was enough for these worshipers to bask in the knowledge that, though invisible to them and in every way inaccessible to them, the swarthy handsome Ex-Athlete and the beautiful Blond Actress might at that very moment be coupling like Shiva and Shakti, unmaking and making the Universe?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Men grow cold as girls grow old
And we all lose our charms in the end.
How prettily Lorelei Lee sang these mordant lyrics!”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“The Playwright had long been fascinated by the strange mercurial personality of the Actor. What is "acting." and why do we respond to "great acting" as we do? We know that an actor is "acting" and yet - we wish to forget that an actor is "acting," and in the presence of talented actors we quickly do forget. This is a mystery, a riddle. How can we forget the actor "acts"? Is the actor "acting" on our behalf? Is the subtext of the actor's "acting" always and forever our own buried (and denied) "acting"?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Maybe all there is is just the next thing maybe all there is is just the next thing maybe all there is is just just the next just the next thing maybe all there is is just the next maybe all there is is is just is just the next thing Roslyn's words stuck in her head & she could not stop repeating them Maybe all there is is just the next thing like a Hindu mantra & she was a yogin murmuring her secret prayer Maybe all there is just the next thing
She thought, That's a comfort!”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“What is "technique" but the absence of passion?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“Bullshit! Li-ar! Your mother and father are dead like everybody else. Everybody is dead.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
“For, in movie logic, aesthetics has the authority of ethics: to be less than beautiful is sad, but to be willfully less than beautiful is immoral.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Blonde
Joyce Carol Oates
Born place: in Lockport, New York, The United States
Born date June 16, 1938
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“Sod this,’ said Kyle and he swung his axe. Charlotte watched amazed, unable to look away, as the blade sliced clean through the father’s neck and his head flew off.”
― Charlie Higson, quote from The Sacrifice
“There's other ways to protect yourself and your family, Arlen. Wisdom. Prudence. Humility. It's not brave to fight a battle you can't win.”
― Peter V. Brett, quote from The Painted Man
“Quality is the best business plan.”
― Ed Catmull, quote from Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
“Then, all of a sudden, there was a great black hull, stretching farther than my eye could see.”
― Ellen Emerson White, quote from Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, R.M.S. Titanic, 1912
“many more survived because of the brave actions of ordinary men and women who found it in their hearts to be extraordinary.”
― David Estes, quote from The Earth Dwellers
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