White Oleander Quotes

“In a perverse way, I was glad for the stitches, glad it would show, that there would be scars. What was the point in just being hurt on the inside? It should bloody well show.”
― Janet Fitch

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

“How easy I was. Like a limpet I attached myself to anything, anyone who showed me the least attention.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I felt like time was a great sea, and I was floating on the back of a turtle, and no sails broke the horizon.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Who am I? I am who I say I am and tomorrow someone else entirely. You are too nostalgic, you want memory to secure you, console you. The past is a bore. What matters is only oneself and what one creates from what one has learned. Imagination uses what it needs and discards the rest— where you want to erect a museum. Don't hoard the past, Astrid. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.”
― 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

“I felt suddenly cruel, like I'd told small children there was no tooth fairy, that it was just their Mom sneaking into their room after they went to bed.”
― Janet Fitch

“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

“The people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. They were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air.”
― Janet Finch

“she’s not as pretty as you,” I said
“But she’s a simpler girl,” my mother whispered.”
― Janet Fitch

“Rena noticed me watching it pass. 'You think they don't got problem?' Rena said. 'Everybody got problem. You got me, they got insurance, house payment, Preparation H.' She smiled, baring the part between her two upper teeth. 'We are the free birds. They want to be us.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental.”
― 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

“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

“Dragostea e temperamentală. Obositoare. Are exigențele ei. Dragostea te folosește. Se răzgandește. (...) Dar ura... Este ceva de care te poți folosi. O poți sculpta. O poți mânui. Este tare sau moale, după cum ai nevoie. Dragostea te umilește, dar ura te alină. E așa de bine. Mă simt infinit mai bine acum.”
― 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

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

“It was all I ever really wanted, that revelation. The possibility of fixed stars.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Dincolo de toate temerile, avertizările,
Dincolo de toate,
Greșelile unei femei sunt diferite de cele ale unei fete,
Sunt scrise cu foc în piatră,
Sunt o trăsătură, nu o eroare.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Nu înțelesesem atunci. Dacă păcătoșii erau așa de nefericiți, de ce preferau suferința? Dar acum știam de ce. Fără rănile mele, cine aș fi fost? Cicatricile mele erau fața mea, trecutul era viața mea. Nu că n-aș fi știut unde se putea ajunge cu aceste amintiri, cu toată setea aceea de frumusețe, de cruzime și de dezamăgire necontenită. (...) mai știam ceva. Că toți cei care nu recunoșteau cine erau sau unde fuseseră se aflau în cel mai mare pericol. Erau niște somnambuli orbi pe frânghie, care tăiau cu degetele aerul subțire. Așa că i-am lăsat să plece, m-am ridica și m-am îndepărtat, știind că am renunțat la ceva ce nu aveam să mai capăt vreodată.”
― 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

“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

“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.