Quotes from book

White Oleander

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

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

“How easy I was. Like a limpet I attached myself to anything, anyone who showed me the least attention.”

“She's never where she is,' I said. 'She's only inside her head.”

“… You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don't know whether you're going to jump.”

“How many people ask you to come share their life?”

“It's all I ever really wanted, that revelation. The possibility of fixed stars.”

“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.”

“If sinners were so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I?”

“Love is a check, that can be forged, that can be cashed. Love is a payment that comes due.”

“The phoenix must burn to emerge.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“She laughed so easily when she was happy. But also when she was sad.”

“The night crackled… Everything had turned to static electricity in the heat. I combed my hair to watch the sparks fly from the ends.”

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

“Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.”