Quotes from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we are living now, and the connection must be there? Like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“The heavenly light you admire is fossil-light, it's the unfathomably distant past you gaze into, stars long extinct”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“I'm Legs Sadovsky I'm FOXFIRE I don't fuck around with guys.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“Language is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?
If it were not for language, could we lie?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“-So you don't believe we have souls I guess?" and Legs laughed and said, "Yeah probably we do but why's that mean we're gonna last forever? Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“The person you love best, you share the world with. When that person's gone the world remains but it isn't the same thing, it's at a distance.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“Then the noise faded and Legs squinted up at the sky, the moon so bright you'd never think it could be merely rock like the earth's common rock and lifeless, merely reflected light from an invisible sun and not a powerful living light of its own...”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“Legs was always proud even before FOXFIRE, that’s the primary fact about Legs Sadovsky: pride.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“--There's something about other people isn't there?--you'd like to know who they are?--you'd like to be them, maybe? People you never saw before and"--my voice lifting in excitement, "it's so strange how they're different from you, isn't it?--or like if somebody had the power, say somebody said to you, 'would you change places with the next person you see, a stranger just turning a corner,' I'd say, 'Hell yes.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“FOXFIRE NEVER SAYS NEVER!
By the time the kidnapped turquoise-and-chrome car overturns--turns and turns and turns!--in a snow-drifted field north of Tydeman's Corners Legs Sadovsky will have driven eleven miles from Eddy's Smoke Shop on Fairfax Avenue, six wild miles with the Highway Patrol cop in pursuit bearing up swiftly when the highway is clear and the girls are hysterical with excitement squealing and clutching one another thrown from side to side as Legs grimaces sighting the bridge ahead, it's one of those old-fashioned nightmare bridges with a steep narrow ramp, narrow floor made of planks but there's no time for hesitation Legs isn't going to use the brakes, she's shrewd, reasoning too that the cop will have to slow down, the fucker'll be cautious thus she'll have several seconds advantage won't she?--several seconds can make quite a difference in a contest like this so the Buick's rushing up the ramp, onto the bridge, the front wheels strike and spin and seem at first to be lifting in decorous surprise Oh! oh but astonishingly the car holds, it's a heavy machine of power that seems almost intelligent until flying off the bridge hitting a patch of slick part-melted ice the car swerves, now the rear wheels appear to be lifting, there's a moment when all effort ceases, all gravity ceases, the Buick a vessel of screams as it lifts, floats, it's being flung into space how weightless! Maddy's eyes are open now, she'll remember all her life this Now, now how without consequence! as the car hits the earth again, yet rebounds as if still weightless, turning, spinning, a machine bearing flesh, bones, girls' breaths plunging and sliding and rolling and skittering like a giant hard-shelled insect on its back, now righting itself again, now again on its back, crunching hard, snow shooting through the broken windows and the roof collapsing inward as if crushed by a giant hand upside-down and the motor still gunning as if it's frantic to escape, they're buried in a cocoon of bluish white and there's a sound of whimpering, panting,sobbing, a dog's puppyish yipping and a strong smell of urine and Legs is crying breathlessly half in anger half in exultation, caught there behind the wheel unable to turn, to look around, to see, "Nobody's dead--right?"
Nobody's dead.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“O.K. he's crazy. But he's a saint too."
"He scares me, I don't like him."
"He scares me. What the hell-he knows."
"Yeah? Why? What does he know?"
"--Things most people'd have to die and go to Hell for, to know.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“... because the Legs wasn't fearful of heights or swimming in rough water or Death itself she wasn't afraid to risk making a fool of herself. Maybe you think that's something of no consequence but it isn't - for making a fool of yourself, offering yourself to others to laugh at, to jeer, that takes guts.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“(...) I could "talk fast" -- that's to say, without hesitating, stammering -- most of the time -- but there were categories of words, sentiments, I could never say, they'd have stuck in my throat. The embarrassment of it even whispering-teasing to Legs for instance 'Yeah you're my heart too!' or 'I love you' or 'I would die for you', nobody ever talked that way, mostly there was just my mother and me and we hardly talked at all.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“A three-quarter moon, glowering bone, with a hint of something bruised, battered, scarred. The moon has endured more than anybody can know.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“İflah olmamak" bir yetişkinin senin davranışlarına itiraz etmesinden başka nedir ki?”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

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― Bernard Malamud, quote from The Magic Barrel

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