Quotes from Janet Fitch

The sound of her laughter was sticky as sap, the smell of night-blooming jasmine soft as a milk bath.

Just 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.

She kissed me on the mouth. Her mouth tasted like iced coffee and cardamom, and I was overwhelmed by the taste, her hot skin and the smell of unwashed hair. I was confused, but not unwilling. I would have let her do anything to me.

He hated crowds, never liked punk. He couldn't handle the nakedness of the rage -his own so sophisticated and finely tuned. He could never see the similarity between himself and Donnie Draino screaming into a mic.

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?

Men... No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.

Mother prescribing her books like medicines. A good dose of Whitman would set me straight, like castor oil. But at least she was thinking of me. I existed once more.

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.

Love humiliates you, hatred cradles you.

He just wanted to stand close to her, touch her hair that was white as glacier milk...

And in one drawer, twenty-seven names for tears. Heartdew. Griefhoney. Sadwater. Die Tranen. Eau de douleur. Los rios del corazon.

She sat in her chair, eyes closed. She liked to be the last one to leave. She despised crowds, and their opinions as they left a performance, or worse, discussed the wait for the bathroom or where do you want to eat. It spoiled her mood. She was still in that other world, she would stay there as long as she possibly could, the parallel channels twining and tunneling through her cortex like coral.

She was breaking her rules. They weren't stone after all, only small and fragile as paper cranes.... I understood why she held to them so hard. Once you break the first one, they all broke, one by one, like firecrackers exploding in your face in a parking lot on the Fourth of July.

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

How could anyone 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 grey 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.

Death like a lover, caressing him, promising him peace, running its fingers through his hair, its tongue in his ear. She put her own two fingers in her mouth. Im so sorry. And pulled the trigger

You ask me about regret? 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 could begin to imagine.

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.

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.

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

She took a life because someone humiliated her, hurt her image of herself as the Valkyrie, the stainless warrior. Exposed her weakness, which was only love. So she avenged herself. So easy to justify, I wrote to her. It's because you felt like a victim you did it. If you were really strong, you could have tolerated the humiliation.

her scruffy innoscense to impregnate with his dreams. reason was seductive, it gave the appearance of truth

Love could never bloom in a concrete block room.

Beauty said there was something more than just one fucking thing after another. Time could rest for a moment, stop all that senseless motion.