Quotes from book

White Oleander

“To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful.”

“Poppies bleed petals of sheer excess. You and I, this sweet battle ground.”

“He reminded me of someone who put your fingers in the door and smiled and talked to you while he smashed them.”

“Life should always be like this…. Like lingering over a good meal.”

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

“Nobody had forgotten anything here. In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them. It wasn't like America where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time.”

“One can bear anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.”

“How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.”

“How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?”

“beautiful girls have certain advantages.”

“I closed my eyes to watch tiny dancers like jeweled birds cross the dark screen of my eyelids.”

“Take my advice. Stay away from all broken people.”

“It's such a liability to love another person.”

“What can she possibly teach you, twenty seven names for tears?”

“without my wounds, who was i? my scars were my face, my past was my life.”

“I felt beautiful but also interrupted. I wasn't used to being so complicated.”

“No matter where I was, my compass pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California.”

“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.”

“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.”