A Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

You people who have survived childhood don't remeber any longer what it was like. You think children are whole, uncomplicated creatures, and if you split them in two with a handy axe there would be all one substance inside, hard candy. But it isn't hard candy so much as a hopeless seething lava of all kinds of things, a turmoil, a mess. And once the child starts thinking about this mess he begins to disintegrate as a child and turns into something else--an adult, an animal.

Joyce Carol Oates

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About Adult All Kinds Animal Any Axe Begins Candy Child Childhood Children Creatures Else Handy Hard Hard Candy Hopeless Inside Kinds Lava Like Longer Mess Much Once People Seething Something Something Else Split Starts Substance Survived Them Things Think Thinking Turmoil Turns Two Uncomplicated Whole Would Would Be

Quote Author

Joyce Carol Oates
American - Writer
Born: June 16, 1938

He wove those three threads into a talk ranging from annually spending a week at Halloween as a child collecting candy to giving candy to hundreds of children at Halloween as an adult; from childhood assistance he received from adults, particularly after his parents divorced, to saying I challenge you to be a caring adult in someone's life ... Great times call forth great leaders.

Thomas Jefferson

The great thing about candy is that it can't be spoiled by the adult world. Candy is innocent. And all Halloween candy pales next to candy corn, if only because candy corn used to appear, like the Great Pumpkin, solely on Halloween.

Rosecrans Baldwin

You know, people always warn children about taking candy from strange adults. But they never warn us adults about taking candy from strange children. All those sweet-looking kids who sell boxes of candy bars on the street to help pay for schooling - how do we know what's in those bars? And don't even get me stated on that nefarious institution designed to lure unsuspecting customers into buying mysterious frosted goodies: the bake sale. Adults, be warned: if a child wanted to poison you it would be a piece of cake! Literally a piece of cake.

Pseudonymous Bosch

Making movies is eating candy. It's a very expensive candy, so you value when you can do it. So when you can do it twice at once, it's like, you know, a kid in a candy store!

Phillip Noyce

The Left is acting like a young child, saying 'I want peace'... A child says 'I want candy right away,' an adult takes all of the factors into account and understands who he's dealing with.

Ehud Barak

Because we have so much eye candy and mind candy, spending so much time trying to pay the rent, all of this conspires to keep us from thinking too hard or taking action from that. Our time is stolen. So much of our daily life is stolen.

Lydia Lunch

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. There are no words for childhood's dark turns and exhalations. A wise child recognizes it and submits to the necessary consequences. A child who counts the cost is a child no longer.

Stephen King

It may sound like a mess, but sometimes mess can be okay, mess can be fine. Sometimes mess is just another word for living your life as real you, not someone else's version of what they think you should be.

Terence Blacker

I don't want to leave this mess around my children to clean up. I want to swing absolutely as hard as I can to straighten things out before they get to the age where it starts hurting them.

Tom Morello

As a child, I was always interested in building things. Instead of buying candy, I would purchase nails, which I used to construct things out of scrap wood. My mother always claimed that my spending my money on nails instead of on candy was why I was so skinny as a kid.

Robert H. Grubbs

People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, “If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with about a million chickens on it.” They were trying to kick you out of childhood. Once you were gone, there was no going back, so you had to hold on as long as you could.

Heather O'Neill

The best thing about candy is that it can't be spoiled by the adult world. Candy is innocent.

Rosecrans Baldwin

we have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.If we are not reborn if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm o childhood it makes no sense to go on living.

Paulo Coelho

Ultimately, I'm a mess. I don't mean I'm a mess, like, emotionally - I mean, I think probably everybody's a mess. David's a mess. But. I'm talking about... I'm messy.

Michael C. Hall

The kind of influence you want is a much deeper influence. It's like empowerment. Things are like this, but what if they were like that? What happens if you turn everything inside out? It's something that not just artists do. I think scientists do that, too. There's a theory: What if we pour water on it? That's also what a child does. If a child came in now, the child would ignore us, go under the table, and make a house.

Vito Acconci

I love all the soft candy. I'm not a big fan of the hard candy though.

Anthony Dirrell

A Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

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