110+ Janet Fitch Quotes On Education, Business And Diversity

Janet Fitch is an American author best known for her novel White Oleander. She is also the author of Paint It Black, a New York Times bestseller, and The Revolution of Marina M. Her writing style is often characterized by its vivid descriptions and lyrical language. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Janet Fitch on education, leadership, business.

Top 10 Janet Fitch Quotes

1. She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.
2. The phoenix must burn to emerge.
3. How right that the body changed over time, becoming a gallery of scars, a canvas of experience, a testament to life and one's capacity to endure it.
4. It's such a liability to love another person.
5. Find someone who will tremble for your touch, someone whose fingers are a poem.
6. 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.
7. Poppies bleed petals of sheer excess. You and I, this sweet battle ground.
8. She should think about her own soul, what she was going to do with this funky tattered pond dank item. Dark and stained, a ruined thing.
9. You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you
10. You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don't know whether you're going to jump.

Janet Fitch Short Quotes

• How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?
• We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental.
• Women always put men first. That's how everything got so screwed up.
• Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.
• here, here is my dark world. you carry it for a change. im out
• My hatred gives me strength.
• I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.
• We read so that we can be moved by a new way of looking at things.
• There is no God, there is only what you want.
• Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched.

Janet Fitch Quotes About Love

This is what happens when you fall in love. You're looking at a natural disaster. — Janet Fitch

Love is a check, that can be forged, that can be cashed. Love is a payment that comes due. — Janet Fitch

As a person with terrible handwriting, I love the computer. I've waited all my life for the computer. — Janet Fitch

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 — Janet Fitch

Love's an illusion. It's a dream you wake up from with an enormous hangover and net credit debt. I'd rather have cash. — Janet Fitch

I wondered where he was now whether I would ever hear him again. Whether someone would love him, someday show him what beauty mean't. — Janet Fitch

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 fingers are a poem. — Janet Fitch

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

...I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn't come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them and then changed their minds. — Janet Fitch

In a train...smash. In his arm her last...breath.' He had loved her. But he hated himself more. Such suffering, so much pain. And he thought it made him hateful. As if suffering was shameful, disgusting, as if pain were a crime. Who can judge another man's suffering? — Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch Quotes About Soul

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. — Janet Fitch

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. — Janet Fitch

I imagined my soul taking in these words like silicated water in the Petrified Forest, turning my wood to patterned agate. I liked it when my mother shaped me this way. I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand. — Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch Quotes About Room

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

My house is modern, but I like my writing room to be old fashioned. I write on a little wooden secretary desk. — Janet Fitch

Love could never bloom in a concrete block room. — Janet Fitch

I felt suddenly cruel, like I´d told dmall children there was no tooth fairy, that it was just their Mom sneaking into their room after they went to bed. — Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch Quotes About Natural

It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have. — Janet Fitch

I understood why she did it. At that moment I knew why people tagged graffiti on the walls of neat little houses and scratched the paint on new cars and beat up well-tended children. It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have. — Janet Fitch

she was such a bad actress. she never said her lines rite, it was something perverse in her nature. and wat was her line anyway? — Janet Fitch

Janet Fitch Famous Quotes And Sayings

Don't attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you're lonely. Lonliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space. The best thing you can do it know yourself... know what you want. — Janet Fitch

Isn't it funny.I'm enjoying my hatred so much more than i ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you. — Janet Fitch

Her fingers moved among barnacles and mussels, blue-black, sharp-edged. Neon red starfish were limp Dalis on the rocks, surrounded by bouquets of stinging anemones and purple bursts of spiny sea urchins. — Janet Fitch

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her white kimono, writing in a notebook with an ink pen she dipped in a bottle. 'Never let a man stay the night,' she told me. 'Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.' The night magic sounded lovely. Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after. — Janet Fitch

How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While 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

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. — Janet Fitch

Now I wish she'd never broken any of her rules. I understood why she held to them so hard. Once you broke the first one, they all broke, one by one, like firecrackers exploding in your face in a parking lot on the Fourth of July. — Janet Fitch

Beauty was deceptive. I would rather wear my pain, my ugliness. I was torn and stitched. I was a strip mine, and they would just have to look. I hoped I made them sick. I hoped they saw me in their dreams. — Janet Fitch

I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple. — 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

The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart. — Janet Fitch

Girls were born knowing how destructive the truth could be. They learned to hold it in, tamp it down, like gunpowder in an old fashioned gun. Then it exploded in your face on a November day in the rain. — Janet Fitch

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

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

If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. — Janet Fitch

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. — Janet Fitch

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway. — Janet Fitch

I wanted to hear what she was saying. I wanted to smell that burnt midnight again, I wanted to feel that wind. It was a secret wanting, like a song I couldn't stop humming, or loving someone I could never have. No matter where I went, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California. — Janet Fitch

I emitted some civetlike female stink, a distinct perfume of sexual wanting, that he had followed to find me here in the dark. — Janet Fitch

There used to be a category called women's fiction - meaning not too rude, not too much sex, a bit domestic and internal. Women have changed so much. We're so varied. And we've become more interested in the same varied experience in fiction. — Janet Fitch

Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked... One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Sew yourself a custom made suit. Pick a better verb. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you. — Janet Fitch

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

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

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

If this was a sandalwood pyre she would have thrown herself in and this paper she'd become would have caught fire and she and him could sail away like two birds. — Janet Fitch

Don't hoard the past. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge. — Janet Fitch

I think we're starved for a life of the senses. We're in the garage, we're in the car, we drive to work, we're in a windowless cubicle that's gray and beige. In a way, it's funny that we consider ourselves an advanced culture, because people who live in so-called primitive environments still enjoy the richness of the smells, colors, and sounds of our world. We all crave that. — Janet Fitch

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 on a blank wall. And so many girls saying, use me, dream me. — Janet Fitch

The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. Sometimes we try to protect them from getting booboos that are too big. Don’t. This is your protagonist, not your kid. — Janet Fitch

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 meanings. In defining, they always left something out. — Janet Fitch

Being in the library is so addictive for me that I really have to exercise self-control so I can get some writing done at home. — Janet Fitch

What can I say about life? Do I praise it for letting you live, or damn it for allowing the rest? — Janet Fitch

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

I'm always looking for something new and interesting to say. And it can't be something I'm directly experiencing. — Janet Fitch

Let me tell you a few things about regret. There is no end to it. Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? — Janet Fitch

Darkness coiled between what he wanted them to believe and the self he despised. It only made him more alone. How could you save someone when he didn't let you kno him? What a waste. The beauty he murdered in this place. He could never see what he had, only what he failed to achieve. — Janet Fitch

I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare. — Janet Fitch

I could hear the icy winds of Sweden, but he didn't seem to feel the chill. — Janet Fitch

What is real is always worth it. — Janet Fitch

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind. — Janet Fitch

I'm a fish swimming by...catch me if you want me. — Janet Fitch

Who are you? the band sang. I tried to remember but I really couldn't say. — Janet Fitch

That kind of tenderness couldn't be permitted to last. You only got a taste, enough to know what perfection meant, and then you paid for it the rest of your life. Like the guy chained to a rock, who stole fire. The gods made an eagle eat his liver for all eternity. You paid for every second of beauty you managed to steal. — Janet Fitch

And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty seperate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door. — Janet Fitch

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape. — Janet Fitch

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

When I start writing, my unconscious, my conflicts, my thoughts all start to come up. So for me, writing is an exploration. I never know how my stories will end. — Janet Fitch

My loneliness tasted like pennies. — Janet Fitch

They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled...mother's big enough, wide enough for us to hide in...mother's who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us. — Janet Fitch

Let me tell you a few things about regret...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? — Janet Fitch

Many women get involved with a man that you pretty much know isn't suitable and you're kind of breaking your rules, but he's attractive in some unknown way. And then he doesn't even realize what a sacrifice you're making by being with him and he dumps you! — Janet Fitch

No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy. — Janet Fitch

A novel is like a dream in which everyone is you. They’re all parts of yourself. — Janet Fitch

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

Writing mirrors the interior self. You know, any book is like the perfect blueprint of the psyche of the author. — Janet Fitch

A cliché is like a coin that has been handled too much. Once language has been overly handled, it no longer leaves a clear imprint. — Janet Fitch

I love Derrick Brown for the surprise of one word waking up next to another. One moment tender, funny or romantic, the next, visceral, ironic and relevatory-here is the full chaos of life. An amazing talent. — Janet Fitch

purification in fire. public cremation — Janet Fitch

Your protagonist is your reader’s portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you’re creating. They don’t have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering. — Janet Fitch

It wasn't awful to be dead. The stillness would almost be a relief. She wouldn't want pain, she wouldn't want to be wounded or mutilated. She could never shoot herself or jump off a building. But being dead wasn't unthinkable. — Janet Fitch

I closed my eyes to watch tiny dancers like jeweled birds cross the dark screen of my eyelids. — Janet Fitch

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

I was always mortified.Didn't they know they were tying thier mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners? — Janet Fitch

history only existed in the human mind, subject to endless revision. 'each man kills the thing he loves'-Oscar Wilde. You kill it before it kills you, but he was wrong. you killed it by accident. thinking you were doing something else. shattering, when all you wanted to do was keep it safe. — Janet Fitch

I wandered through the stacks, running my hands along the spines of the books on the shelves, they reminded me of cultured or opinionated guests at a wonderful party, whispering to each other. — Janet Fitch

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

I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to. — Janet Fitch

Always tell us where we are. And don't just tell us where something is, make it pay off. Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character. Look at the openings of Fitzgerald stories, and Graham Greene, they're great at this. — Janet Fitch

If sinners where so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? — Janet Fitch

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

I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under his gaze. — Janet Fitch

She was starting to think there might be such a thing as karma - that repetition - maybe you lived through the same thing over and over until you stopped caring. Maybe eventually it got less intense, until it was just nothing. — Janet Fitch

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

Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky. — Janet Fitch

at least if you were ignorant you could do wat you wanted. you had no idea wat had been acheived in the past. you were free instead of chewed at by bleeding impotence, dissolved away like a pearl in acid — Janet Fitch

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

She wanted to wake up like Dorothy and see Michael's face peering over the side of the bed, laughing. WHY, YOU JUST HIT YOUR HEAD. But it was not a dream and there was no Kansas and he was never coming back. — Janet Fitch

I think that Oprah's on a mission to improve the lives of the average American in various ways. And one of them is to bring literature to people who would normally not be quite as demanding in their reading tastes, to show them writing that can be more than just entertainment. — Janet Fitch

Inside every human being, there is unlimited time and space. — Janet Fitch

A book's flaws make it less predictable. — Janet Fitch

Life Lessons by Janet Fitch

1. Janet Fitch teaches us to stay true to ourselves and not to be afraid of taking risks in order to pursue our dreams. She also emphasizes the importance of resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity.
2. Through her writing, she encourages us to be brave and to never give up on our goals, no matter how difficult the journey may be.
3. Janet Fitch also encourages us to be kind to ourselves and to embrace our imperfections, as these are what make us unique and special.