Janet Fitch, White Oleander Quotes
She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.
Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.
Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.
Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.
Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.
I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season.
Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.
His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute.
Who are you? the band sang. I tried to remember but I really couldn't say.
A person didn’t need to be beautiful, they just needed to be loved. But I couldn’t help wanting it. If that was the way I could be loved, to be beautiful, I’d take it
I was always mortified.Didn't they know they were tying thier mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?
What can I say about life? Do I praise it for letting you live, or damn it for allowing the rest?
The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.
My heart felt like a balloon that was filling too full, and I panicked. I might get the bends, the way scuba divers did when they surfaced too fast.
Don't turn over rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.
Marvel hates her because she's pretty and doesn't have any kids to worry about.
don't turn over rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live underneath them.
Men... No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.
I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despaire wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy."-white oleander
Do you ever want to go home?' I asked Paul.He brushed an ash from my face. 'It's the century of the displaced person, ' he said. 'You can never go home.
For lunch, we drove into the hills and parked in the dappled shade of a big sycamore, its powdery white bark like a woman's body against the uncanny blue sky.
Never let a man stay the night. Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.
I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despair wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favourite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.
I hated labels anyway. People didn’t fit in slots—prostitute, housewife, saint—like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
This was how girls left. They packed up their suitcases and walked away in high heels. They pretended they weren't crying, that it wasn't the worst day of their lives.
Always learn poems by heart, ' she said. 'They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.
