Quotes from book
White Oleander

White Oleander
Janet Fitch

White Oleander is a 1999 novel by American author Janet Fitch. It is a coming-of-age story about a child who is separated from her mother and placed in a series of foster homes. It deals with themes of motherhood. The book was selected for Oprah's Book Club in May 1999, after which it became a national bestseller. It was adapted as a 2002 film.

Janet Fitch photo

“I felt like time was a great sea, and I was floating on the back of a turtle, and no sails broke the horizon.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“Beauty was deceptive. I would rather wear my pain, my ugliness. I was torn and stitched. I was a strip mine, and they would just have to look. I hoped I made them sick. I hoped they saw me in their dreams.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“Only peons made excusses for themselves she taught me. Never apologize, never explain.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Janet Fitch photo

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

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Janet Fitch photo

“She would buy magic every day of the week. Love me, that face said. I'm so lonely, so desperate. I'll give you whatever you want.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children between friends family things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost more easily than anyone could imagine.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“I couldn't imagine owning beauty like my mothers. I wouldn't dare.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“Love's an illusion. It's a dream you wake up from with an enormous hangover and net credit debt. I'd rather have cash.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“We received our colouring from the Norsemen, hairy savages who hacked their gods to pieces and hung the flesh from trees. We are the ones who sacked Rome. Fear only feeble old age and death in bed. Don't forget who you are.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“But I knew one more thing. That people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“What was the point in such loneliness among people. At least if you were by yourself, you had a good reason to be lonely.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“A womans mistakes are different from a girls”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“Now I wish she'd never broken any of her rules. I understood why she held to them so hard. Once you broke the first one, they all broke, one by one, like firecrackers exploding in your face in a parking lot on the Fourth of July.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

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Janet Fitch photo

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander