White Oleander

by Janet Fitch

And I tried not to make it worse by asking for things, pulling her down with my thoughts. I had seen girls clamor for new clothes and complain about what their mothers made for dinner. I was always mortified. Didn’t they know they were tying their mothers to the ground? Weren’t chains ashamed of their prisoners?

“Men,” she said. “No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.”

“Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you. Changes its mind.” Her eyes were closed. Beads of water decorated her face, and her hair spread out from her head like jellyfish tendrils. “But hatred, now. That’s something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It’s hard or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you.

I sensed how he looked at my bare arm, the shoulder, my lips. To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful.

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.

nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

Now I could dance, but she had left me without music.

When you started thinking it was easy, you were forgetting what it cost.

A year ago I would have felt a panic at being thought heartless. Now I just wanted to eat regularly.

I couldn’t picture myself filling this room, inhabiting it, imposing my personality here.

He was cheating on her, I could feel it in his body. He had the world, all Claire had was him.

When he got up, he woke me and Claire up. But when we got up first, we crept around, because Ron was still sleeping. A man’s world.

You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don’t know whether you’re going to jump.

Perhaps the only love that is accurate without qualification is the love of a very young child. Afterward, she too becomes a person, and thus compromised.