I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.

— Janet Fitch

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

— Janet Fitch

I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.

— Janet Fitch

I wanted to freeze this moment forever, the chimes, the slight splash of the water, the chink of the dogs’ leashes, laughter from the pool, the stretch of my mother’s dip-pen, the smell of the trees, the stillness. I wished I could shut it in a locket to wear around my neck. Furthermore, I wished a sleep would find us, at this absolute second, like sleep over the castle of sleeping beauty.

— Janet Fitch

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.

— Janet Fitch

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."-white oleander

— Janet Fitch

I was always mortified. Didn't they know they were tying their mothers to the ground? Weren't chains ashamed of their prisoners?

— Janet Fitch

Just a beginner, but he learned so fast. Everything came so damn easy to him. Not true. The hard things cam easy. But the easy things he found impossibly hard.

— Janet Fitch

Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately?

— Janet Fitch

Loneliness IA a human condition

— Janet Fitch