White Oleander Quotes

“It was torture for me to try to fit in as a girl among other girls. Girls my own age were a different species entirely.”

“That beaky anorexic and that toupeed Chihuahua. It’s beyond grotesque. Their children wouldn’t know whether to peck or bark.”

“She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress.”

“I wanted to freeze this moment forever, the chimes, the slight splash of water, the chink of dogs’ leashes, laughter from the pool, the skritch of my mother’s dip-pen, the smell of the tree, the stillness. I wished I could shut it in a locket to wear around my neck.”

“Now I wished 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.”

“A jewel is forming inside my body. No, it’s not my heart. This is harder, cold and clean. I wrap myself around this new jewel, cradle it within me.”

“Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you. Changes its mind. But hatred, now. That’s something you can sue. Sculpt. Wield. It’s hard or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you.”

“That was a day with a trapdoor, and we all fell through.”

“Prison agrees with me. There’s no hypocrisy here. Kill or be killed, and everybody knows it.”

“God is dead, haven’t you heard? He died a hundred years ago, gave out from sheer lack of interest, decided to play golf instead.”

“I loved his brown eyes, the way he looked so worried, as if he’d never seen a kid throw up before.”

“She took her X-act knife and selected a shirt from his closet, his favorite brown shirt. ‘How right he should wear clothing the color of excrement.‘”

“‘Is it terrible here? Do they hurt you?’ ‘Not as much as I hurt them.‘”

“A person didn’t need to be beautiful, they just needed to be loved. But I couldn’t help wanting it.”

“The teachers’ mouths opened and butterflies burst out, too fast to capture.”

“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow.”

“Haven’t you ever been to the races? You’ve got to wear something loud. It’s traditional.”

“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.”

“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 separate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.”

“You want to write me off? Try. Just realize when you’re cutting off the plank upon which you stand, which end of it is nailed to the ship.”