Quotes by Janet Fitch

“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, t...”

“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.”

“My mother once wrote a poem about rivers. They were women, she wrote. Starting out small girls, tiny streams decorated with wildflowers. They were torrents, gouging paths through sheer granite, fli...”

“I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.”

“What was beauty unless you intended to use it, like a hammer, or a key? It was just something for other people to use and admire, or envy, despise. To nail their dreams onto like a picture hanger o...”

“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.”

“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.”

“Never let a man stay the night, she told me. Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.”

“...and I thought, there was no God, there was only what you wanted.”

“I hated labels anyway. People didnt fit in slotsprostitute, housewife, saintlike sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

“That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific--chair, eye, stone--but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the...”

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

“He was obsessed with obituaries. She'd never read them before, he couldn't believe it, to him it was like someone who'd never read the funnies...Michael always wanted to know what they died of- acc...”

“I almost said, youre not broken, youre just going through something. But I couldnt. She knew. There was something terribly wrong with her, all the way inside. She was like a big diamond with a dead...”

“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.”

“Just a beginner, but he learned so fast. Everything came so damn easy to him. Not true. The hard things cam easy. But the easy things he found impossibly hard.”

“You must find a boy your own age. Someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered. Someone whose ...”

“I hadnt understood at the time. If sinners were so unhappy,why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why.Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my pastwas my life.”

“A month ago she would have been embarrassed at the confidence. Now she felt a surprising kinship. She was a citizen of the new land, a country she had never before visited, only a rumor, this vast ...”

“I took the volume to a table, opened its soft, ivory pages... and fell into it as into a pool during dry season.”