Janet Fitch Quotes

“Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Don’t attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you’re lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way. (movie & novel combination)”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“A couple of times, I could have turned a trick. But I didn’t want to start. I knew how it would play. When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I almost said, you’re not broken, you’re just going through something. But I couldn’t. She knew. There was something terribly wrong with her, all the way inside. She was like a big diamond with a dead spot in the middle. I was supposed to breathe life into that dead spot, but it hadn’t worked.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“If I were a poet, that’s what I’d write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers live without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“The question of good and the nature of evil will always be one of philosophy’s most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth clichés lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind’s destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“What’s real is always worth it,' she explained to me. 'Look how it’s made.' She showed me the shoulders, the way they were knit together with a separate yoke instead of a seam. 'You’ll wear it your whole life.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Don’t attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you’re lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. And intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way. (Book AND movie combination.)”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“We tried not to be in the same room at the same time when Starr was home, we set the air on fire between us.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Women always put men first. That's how everything got so screwed up.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“You never thought, maybe I should have left Astrid some words.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Talk to me. Look up, I thought. But she didn't, only stopped and picked a sprig of alyssum to smell the honey. I cut a shred from my heart and dangled it on a homemade hook before her.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I liked the shifting colors of groups on the courtyard, but could not distinguish one student from the next. They were too young and undamaged, sure of themselves. To them, pain was a country they had heard of, maybe watched on a show about on TV, but one whose stamp had not yet been made in their passports. Where could I find a place where my world connected to theirs?”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“My words, that's what she wanted. What's this? she kept asking. What's this? But how could I tell her? She'd taken all the words.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“...and I thought, there was no God, there was only what you wanted.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Never let a man stay the night,” she told me. “Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Reverend Thomas said that in hell, the sinners were indifferent to the suffering of others, it was part of damnation. I hadn't understood that until now.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I was graduating in two months, but I wasn't to Pitzer, that was for sure. I was the old child, the past that had to burned away, so my mother, the phoenix, could emerge once again, a golden bird rising from the ash.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“It wasn't like America, where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time. We hadn't learned yet, there was not such thing as an empty canvas.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Don’t attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you’re lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. And intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”
― Janet Fitch movie and book combination.