Janet Fitch Quotes - Page 8

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• They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising.

  Janet Fitch

  Dream, Men, Hands

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Janet Fitch

  Play, White, Enemy

  4 Copy quote

• At every moment, each instrument knew what to play. Its little bit. But none could see the whole thing like this, all at once, only its own part. Just like life. Each person was like a line of music, but nobody knew what the symphony sounded like. Only the conductor had the whole score.

  Janet Fitch

  Play, Symphony, Lines

  4 Copy quote

• It's their skins I'm peeling," she said. "The skins of the insipid scribblers, which I graft to the page, creating monsters of meaninglessness.

  Janet Fitch

  Creating, Skins, Monsters

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a fish swimming by...catch me if you want me.

  Janet Fitch

  Swimming, Want, Fishes

  4 Copy quote

• You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

  Janet Fitch

  Daughter, Mother, Home

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.75, Hachette UK

  11 Copy quote

• I felt beautiful but also interrupted. I wasn't used to being so complicated.

  Janet Fitch

  Beautiful, Complicated, Used

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

  4 Copy quote

• We parked in back and walked down the stairs with their polished brass railings, past the old-fashioned kitchen. We could see the chefs cooking. It smelled like stew, or meat loaf, the way time should smell, solid and nourishing.

  Janet Fitch

  Past, Smell, Cooking

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.137, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Couple, Thinking, Play

  4 Copy quote

• Never apologize. Never explain.

  Janet Fitch

  Apologizing

  "White Oleander". www.imdb.com. 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• Who was I, really? I was the sole occupant of my mother's totalitarian state, my own personal history rewritten to fit the story she was telling that day. There were so many missing pieces. I was starting to find some of them, working my way upriver, collecting a secret cache of broken memories in a shoebox.

  Janet Fitch

  Mother, Memories, Broken

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.246, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.

  Janet Fitch

  Despair, Panic, Possibility

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.82, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

• I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, men who made you love them then changed their minds.

  Janet Fitch

  Tired, Men, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• Beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer.

  Janet Fitch

  Prayer, Eye, Orange

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.222, Hachette UK

  15 Copy quote

• Most people write the same sentence over and over again. The same number of words-say, 8-10, or 10-12. The same sentence structure. Try to become stretchy-if you generally write 8 words, throw a 20 word sentence in there, and a few three-word shorties. If you're generally a 20 word writer, make sure you throw in some threes, fivers and sevens, just to keep the reader from going crosseyed.

  Janet Fitch

  Writing, Numbers, People

  4 Copy quote

• A dependent clause (a sentence fragment set off by commas, dontcha know) helps you explore your story by moving you deeper into the sentence. It allows you to stop and think harder about what you've already written. Often the story you're looking for is inside the sentence. The dependent clause helps you uncover it.

  Janet Fitch

  Moving, Thinking, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• This involves more than I can discuss here, but do it. Read the writers of great prose dialogue-people like Robert Stone and Joan Didion. Compression, saying as little as possible, making everything carry much more than is actually said. Conflict. Dialogue as part of an ongoing world, not just voices in a dark room. Never say the obvious. Skip the meet and greet.

  Janet Fitch

  Dark, Voice, People

  4 Copy quote

• What is a scene? a) A scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the Aristotelian unities of time and place-this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) A scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. Starts angry, ends embarrassed. Starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) Something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. Make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. Make something happen.

  Janet Fitch

  Character, Unity, Goes On

  4 Copy quote

• I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

  Janet Fitch

  Hands, Clay, Potters

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

  6 Copy quote

• Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched.

  Janet Fitch

  Sleep, Lovers, Giddy

  Janet Fitch (2013). “Paint It Black”, p.140, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.

  Janet Fitch

  Artist, Oleanders

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

  7 Copy quote

• The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand.

  Janet Fitch

  Writing, Poetry, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• Remember...we don't see objects, we see light. [...] Light can do anything water can do--flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do--paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always light in a room.

  Janet Fitch

  Fall, Artist, Light

  19 Copy quote

• Appealing to the five senses is the feature that will always set writing apart from the visual media. A good writer will tell us what the world smells like, what the textures are, what the sounds are, what the light looks like, what the weather is.

  Janet Fitch

  Writing, Light, Media

  4 Copy quote

• I wish my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart.

  Janet Fitch

  Wish, Oleanders, Broke

  7 Copy quote

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