"The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me." -Astrid, White Oleander by Janet Fitch
"I hadn't understood at the time. If Sinners were so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But know I knew why. Without my wounds who was I? my Scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn't that I didn't know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever present loss. I had already seen more of the world, it's beauty and misery and sheer surprise, than they could hope or fear to perceive. But I knew one More thing. That people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. they were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air. So I let them go, got up and walked away, knowing I'd given up on something I could never get back. Some Illusion i'd had, that I could be saved, Start Again"
The whole book is written so beautifully, I love it. I've been writing down/underlining all kinds of quotes from it.
I was all "uh wha?" when she became "born-again" so I'm glad she comes around lol.
Another one I wrote down today: "This was how girls left. They packed up their suitcases and walked away in high heels. They pretended they weren't crying, that it wasn't the worst day if their lives. That they didn't want their mothers to come running after them, begging their forgiveness, that they wouldn't have gone down on their knees and thanked God if they could stay."
I'm on the part where she gets shot. You KNOW its good when the main character gets shot not even 1/3 of the way in, lol :P
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I think you'd really like the book, it's.. beautifully tragic.
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"I hadn't understood at the time. If Sinners were so unhappy, why would they prefer their suffering? But know I knew why. Without my wounds who was I? my Scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn't that I didn't know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever present loss. I had already seen more of the world, it's beauty and misery and sheer surprise, than they could hope or fear to perceive. But I knew one More thing. That people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. they were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air. So I let them go, got up and walked away, knowing I'd given up on something I could never get back. Some Illusion i'd had, that I could be saved, Start Again"
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I was all "uh wha?" when she became "born-again" so I'm glad she comes around lol.
Another one I wrote down today:
"This was how girls left. They packed up their suitcases and walked away in high heels. They pretended they weren't crying, that it wasn't the worst day if their lives. That they didn't want their mothers to come running after them, begging their forgiveness, that they wouldn't have gone down on their knees and thanked God if they could stay."
I'm on the part where she gets shot. You KNOW its good when the main character gets shot not even 1/3 of the way in, lol :P
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