You can't deny Eros. Eros wills trike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. And the god of Eros will flow through you, as Lawrence says, in the 'perfect obliteration of blood consciousness.
Joyce Carol OatesAnd so you must grant to God what is God and not try to think of what you have lost, for that way is madness.
Joyce Carol OatesBudapest in late May is a city of lilacs. The sweet, languid, rather sleepy smell of lilacs wafts everywhere. And it is a city of lovers, many of them quite middle-aged. Walking with their arms around each other, embracing and kissing on park benches. A sensuousness very much bound up (it seems to me) with the heady ubiquitous smell of lilacs.
Joyce Carol OatesThat is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?
Joyce Carol Oates