Fanny Britt > Quotes

“The same thing happens every time- another hole opens up in my rib cage.
Hearing everything.
Hearing nothing.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“On the bus, I pull out my book.
It's the best book I've ever read, even if I'm only halfway through. It's called Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, with two dots over the e.
Jane Eyre lives in England in Queen Victoria's time. She's an orphan who's taken in by a horrid rich aunt who locks her in a haunted room to punish her for lying, even though she didn't lie.
Then Jane is sent to a charity school, where all she gets to eat is burnt porridge and brown stew for many years. But she grows up to be clever, slender, and wise anyway.
Then she finds work as a governess in a huge manor called Thornfield, because in England houses have names. At Thornfield, the stew is less brown and the people less simple.
That's as far as I've gotten...
Diving back into Jane Eyre...
Because she grew up to be clever, slender and wise, no one calls Jane Eyre a liar, a thief or an ugly duckling again. She tutors a young girl, Adèle, who loves her, even though all she has to her name are three plain dresses. Adèle thinks Jane Eyre's smart and always tells her so.
Even Mr. Rochester agrees. He's the master of the house, slightly older and mysterious with his feverish eyebrows. He's always asking Jane to come and talk to him in the evenings, by the fire. Because she grew up to be clever, slender, and wise, Jane Eyre isn't even all that taken aback to find out she isn't a monster after all...
Jane Eyre soon realizes that she's in love with Mr. Rochester, the master of Thornfield. To stop loving him so much, she first forces herself to draw a self-portrait, then a portrait of Miss Ingram, a haughty young woman with loads of money who has set her sights on marrying Mr. Rochester.
Miss Ingram's portrait is soft and pink and silky.
Jane draws herself: no beauty, no money, no relatives, no future. She show no mercy. All in brown.
Then, on purpose, she spends all night studying both portraits to burn the images into her brain for all time.
Everyone needs a strategy, even Jane Eyre...
Mr. Rochester loves Jane Eyre and asks her to marry him.
Strange and serious, brown dress and all, he loves her.
How wonderful, how impossible.
Any boy who'd love a sailboat-patterned, swimsuited sausage who tames rabid foxes would be wonderful. And impossible.
Just like in Jane Eyre, the story would end badly.
Just like in Jane Eyre, she'd learn the boy already has a wife as crazy as a kite, shut up in the manor tower, and that even if he loves the swimsuited sausage, he can't marry her.
Then the sausage would have to leave the manor in shame and travel to the ends of the earth, her heart in a thousand pieces...
Oh right, I forgot.
Jane Eyre returns to Thornfield one day and discovers the crazy-as-a-kite wife set the manor on fire and did Mr. Rochester some serious harm before dying herself.
When Jane shows up at the manor, she discovers Mr. Rochester in the dark, surrounded by the ruins of his castle.
He is maimed, blind, unkempt.
And she still loves him.
He can't believe it.
Neither can I.
Something like that would never happen in real life.
Would it?
... You'll see, the story ends well.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Just like in Jane Eyre, the moral of the story would be 'never forget that you're nothing but a sad sausage.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Listening to them, I imagine myself a gorgeous stubborn singer, traveling the world with hope and a guitar, turning as rough and piney as a Laurentian forest.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“You’ll see, the story ends well.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Saying to herself out loud so just maybe someone will hear her, even though by now everyone's in bed, "I'm so tired I could die.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“I'm starting to see that
the less I think about it,
the less it's true.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Genevieve announces in her pinched voice for all to hear, "I stuck a fork in your butt, but you're so fat didn't feel a thing!!"
As everyone turns to look at me, the world- even the air itself- jerks to a standstill.
My heart stops. And waits. For anything. Rescue. Reinforcements. The end of the world, with any luck...
I get down on one knee in the sand and pretend to tie my shoes, so I don't have to look at the others
looking at me
looking at them
looking at me.
We ate with spoons this morning.
But I can't help but wonder, I'll wonder for the longest time, if Genevieve really did what she said.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Waiting for the bus on Sherbrooke today is like waiting to die.
Or what I imagine it would be like.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Jane Eyre may be an orphan, homely, battered, alone and abandoned, but she is not, never has been and never will be a big fat sausage.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“De chez nous on voit juste des maison. Briques neuves, pierres de champs, bardeaux d'asphalte, taupe, sable, beige, greige, bois traité, aménagement paysager, petits arbres sans passé. C'est vraiment ça qui manque, en banlieue, du passé. Pis de l'eau. Voir un peu d'eau. Avec du courant. C'est ça qui rend la banlieue débile. Même la neige là-bas pis la neige ici ont rien à voir. Ici elle s'approche un peu de l'eau, elle se liquéfie, elle vie comme parmi les gens. Là-bas, la neige est déposée comme une couverte trop lourde.”
― Fanny Britt, Hôtel Pacifique

“I had no idea that love is like a rock shattering your heart, as painful as it is life-giving, and that even as it makes you want to bolt, it keeps you glued to the spot.”
― Fanny Britt, Louis parmi les spectres

“So I stare at the beautiful brand-new crinoline dress that’s mine alone with no whiff of mothballs. Even so, it droops a little.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Tonight the music, Anita's and Ruth's squeals, the joy shimmering in the light from the orange-fringed lamp, the leg of lamb, all of it helps me forget that tomorrow, I'll be getting on a bus to Lake Kanawana with forty kids in shorts, not one of them a friend.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“Billie doesn’t say much. I think it’s because she feels so let down by others that she loses the ability to speak.....But when she does speak, the world ignites and explodes in clusters of honey and fire. Billie doesn’t make threats - she makes promises.”
― Fanny Britt, Louis parmi les spectres

“Sa distraction lui a valu mon courroux maternel, et un biscuit de plus dans son lunch, à cause de la culpabilité suivant le courroux maternel. Boris”
― Fanny Britt, Les maisons

“Any boy who'd love a sailboat-patterned, swimsuited sausage who tames rabid foxes would be wonderful. And impossible.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“They say that grown-ups always want to give their kids what they never had. A red trike, a stereo sound system, a seaside vacation. Or bravery.”
― Fanny Britt, Louis parmi les spectres

“Genevieve announces in her pinched voice for all to hear, "I stuck a fork in your butt, but you're so fat didn't feel a thing!!"
As everyone turns to look at me, the world- even the air itself- jerks to a standstill.
My heart stops. And waits. For anything. Rescue. Reinforcements. The end of the world, with any luck...
I get down on one knee in the sand and pretend to tie my shoe, so I don't have to look at the others
looking at me
looking at them
looking at me.
We ate with spoons this morning.
But I can't help but wonder, I'll wonder for the longest time, if Genevieve really did what she said.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“One morning, we eat a dish straight out of Jane Eyre's barding school. It's disgusting.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“I know absolutely nothing, Mom. I've been wrong so often. I know nothing of what it takes to raise children and keep them from dying.”
― Fanny Britt, Les maisons

“A fox. A real live red fox, tiny, with a small patch of darker fur just above its left front leg. Like a beauty spot.
It's eyes are so kind I just about burst. The same look in another human's eyes, and my soul would be theirs for sure.”
― Fanny Britt

“I had no idea that love is like a rock shattering your heart, as painful as it is life-giving, and that even as it makes you want to bolt, it keeps you glued to the spot”
― Fanny Britt, Louis parmi les spectres

“In the camp parking lot, while the groups form-
Groups of girls, guys, snobs, nerds, misfits, and outcasts-
My strategy is to pretend to look for something in my suitcase and so I find myself with... The outcasts who, funnily enough, have all done the same.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me

“étanches ne laissent passer que les virus grippaux. À”
― Fanny Britt, Les maisons

“Billie doesn't say much. I think it's because she feels so let down by others that she loses the ability to speak. But when she does speak, the world ignites and explodes in clusters of honey and fire. Billie doesn't make threats - she makes promises.”
― Fanny Britt, Louis parmi les spectres

“At the campfire, when I arrive and the boys chant, "Boum! Ba-da-boum! BA-DA-BOUM!" My strategy is to smile softly, as I wonder whether lamebrain or numbskull suits them best.”
― Fanny Britt, Jane, the Fox & Me