Quotes by Janet Fitch

“The phoenix must burn to emerge.”

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”

“Always learn poems by heart,' she said. 'They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”

“A novel is like a dream in which everyone is you. They’re all parts of yourself.”

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

“I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

“She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.”

“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 b...”

“A person didn’t need to be beautiful, they just needed to be loved. But I couldn’t help wanting it. If that was the way I could be loved, to be beautiful, I’d take it”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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 lif...”

“She had forgotten about this, the narcotic of the crowd. This is why you came to hear music. To stop being yourself, to let that thing that you supposedly were go, and just be part of a mob, synchr...”

“I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was.That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should havespent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'...”

“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.”

“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.”