Quotes from Janet Fitch

Well, the universe had spoken. There was no one left to turn to.

The damned could be saved, he said, anytime. But they refused to give up their sins. Though they suffered endlessly, they would not give them up, even for salvation, perfect divine love.

I saw that miracles were shocking, as overwhelming as disasters

He could sense the ridiculousness of life even as it tore the guts out of him. She saw that now. And death lay coiled in the dark between the perception and the pain.

This ragged heart, she said, pulling at her kimono. I should rip it out and bury it for compost.

It's magic, Astrid. You have to know how to reach up and pull beauty out of thin air.

Mother prescribing her books like medicines. A good dose of Whitman would set me straight, like caster oil.

This dumb show of privilege—the quartet, the stylized flowers of stained glass, the illumination of the skylights. Yet it was beautiful. Did beauty have to be shameful? I wished there was someone I could ask.

The view of the highway was so bad that you could not even see the next viaduct. Te moment it loomed out of the mist it disappeared again, as if the world created itself and was blotted out again.

We stared out at the city that hummed and glittered like a computer chip deep in some unknowable machine, holding its secret like a poker hand

One death did not salve another.

you ever wonder why people get out of bed in the morning? why do they bother? why not just drink turpentine?

Never let a man stay the night. Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.

I wasn't beautiful anymore. Now I looked like what I was, a raw wound.

Maybe she was the lucky one, I thought, a woman who had divested herself of both future and past. No dreams, no standards, a woman who smoked and drank and slept with men like Sergei, men who were spiritually what came up out of the sewers when it rained.

cariño, eso es lo que pasa cuando te enamoras. Estás viendo una catástrofe de la naturaleza.

Nature was always there, no matter what.

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despair wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.

But things coming out of her, visible to the world? It was in a strange way another loss. You gave things away you couldn't afford to lose. Private things. You showed yourself and you couldn't take it back.

No scorn like the scorn of an aging queen for a pretty girl with a crap fake DL.

The smell of the smoke always brought me back to my mother, to a rooftop under an untrustworthy moon. How beautiful she had been, how perfectly unhinged.

Taste his fear. It tastes just like champagne. Cold and crisp and absolutely without sweetness.

Of course I did, I was blank, anyone could fill me in. I waited to see who I would be, what they would create on my delicious vacancy.

I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. 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. Mother