Florence > Florence's Quotes

“I nodded. A man's world. But what did it mean? That men whistled and stared and yelled things at you, and you had to take it, or you get raped or beat up? A man's world meant places men could go but not women. It meant they had more money,and didn't have kids, not the way women did, to look after every second. And it meant that women loved them more than they loved the women, that they could want something with all their hearts, and then not.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“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, White Oleander

“Take my advice. Stay away from all broken people.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“She laughed so easily when she was happy. But also when she was sad.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“She's never where she is,' I said. 'She's only inside her head.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“She would buy magic every day of the week. Love me, that face said. I'm so lonely, so desperate. I'll give you whatever you want.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I liked it when my mother tried to teach me things, when she paid attention. So often when I was with her, she was unreachable. 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.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anaïs Nin, Incest: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932-1934

“To hell, to hell with balance! I break glasses; I want to burn, even if I break myself. I want to live only for ecstasy. Nothing else affects me. Small doses, moderate loves, all the demi-teintes – all these leave me cold. I like extravagance, heat… sexuality which bursts the thermometer! I’m neurotic, perverted, destructive, fiery, dangerous - lava, inflammable, unrestrained. I feel like a jungle animal who is escaping captivity.”
― Anaïs Nin, Incest: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932-1934

“I feel so many things growing—my individuality, my confidence; I feel lines of my character growing stronger. I’m really sprouting, springing up, with mixed feelings of tenderness and bitterness, faith and disillusion, hardness and softness. I have never felt so clearly that my Self is — obscurely and stubbornly self-made.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Early Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 1

“I am trying to sleep on the front porch of forgiveness. I am too young to be this lonely. Still, do not mistake all of my honest open for empty. I didn’t leave the door of my love unlocked so you could mistake my sadness for a shelf. I do not have room to carry anyone’s chaos but my own. If I sink, it will be in my own ocean. If I float, it will be on the ship I built with my own hands.”
― Blythe Baird

“Even though trauma has a way of
becoming the wallpaper of my head,

watch me drag the art
out of my suffering.

Watch me plant seeds down my spine
and bloom into a garden of poetry

from every horrible thing that has ever
happened to me, all the nights my voice
turned to cement and I couldn't say anything-

Watch me build an empire from the ashes
of everything that tried to destroy me.”
― Blythe Baird, If My Body Could Speak

“Half daughter,

half apology, all fire and the wrong kind of love.”
― Blythe Baird, If My Body Could Speak

“‎You're not the same as you were before," he said. You were much more... muchier... you've lost your muchness.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“For that reason- Let me love you don’t mind my desperation let me hold you not just for vacation but for real and forever Make it real life, let me be a real wife to you. Girlfriend, lover, mother, friend.”
― Lana Del Rey, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

“Art and order, the relatives that refuse to relate.”
― Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher

“No art can possibly comfort HER then, even though art is credited with so many things, especially an ability to offer solace. Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.”
― Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher

“Her body is one big refrigerator, where Art is well stored.”
― Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher

“Seek and you shall find the repulsive things you secretly hope to find.”
― Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher