Janet Frame Quotes

“I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.”

“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”

“Life is hell, but at least there are prizes. Or so one thought.”

“She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don’t come out.”

“The word permanent... had its own kind of revenge on
those who misused it, for the Bible said that nothing was
permanent and everything came and went.”

“From the first place of liquid darkness, within the second
place of air and light, I set down the following record
with its mixture of fact and truths and memories of truths
and its direction always toward the Third Place, where
the starting point is myth.”

“What use the green river, the gold place, if time and
death pinned human in the pocket of my land not rest
from taking underground the green all-willowed and
white rose and bean flower and morning-mist picnic of
song in pepper-pot breast of thrush?”