I wondered why it had to be so poisonous. Oleanders could live through anything, they could stand heat, drought, neglect, and put out thousands of waxy blooms. So what did they need poison for? Couldn't they just be bitter? They weren't like rattlesnakes, they didn't even eat what they killed. The way she boiled it down, distilled it, like her hatred. Maybe it was a poison in the soil, something about L.A., the hatred, the callousness, something we didn't want to think about, that the plant concentrated in its tissues. Maybe it wasn't a source of poison, but just another victim.
- Janet Fitch
topic: Thinking, Hatred, Poison, Oleanders, Callousness
The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I.
- Janet Fitch
source: Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.7, Hachette UK
topic: Mother, Spring, Sleep, Oleanders, Green Leaves
I nodded. A man's world. But what did it mean? That men whistled and stared and yelled things at you, and you had to take it, or you get raped or beat up? A man's world meant places men could go but not women. It meant they had more money,and didn't have kids, not the way women did, to look after every second. And it meant that women loved them more than they loved the women, that they could want something with all their hearts, and then not.
- Janet Fitch
topic: Mean, Kids, Heart, Oleanders
That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific-chair, eye, stone- but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.
- Janet Fitch
source: Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.185, Hachette UK
topic: Eye, Feelings, Stones, Oleanders

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.
- Janet Fitch
source: Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.81, Hachette UK
topic: Inspirational, Disappointment, Loneliness, Oleanders
I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
- Janet Fitch
source: Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.88, Hachette UK
topic: People, Water, Desire, Oleanders, Sorting
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 use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you.
- Janet Fitch
topic: Love Is, Hatred, Mind, Oleanders, Humiliate
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.
- Janet Fitch
source: "White Oleander". Book by Janet Fitch, 1999.
topic: Inspirational, Disappointment, Loneliness, Sensitive Person, Oleanders
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
source: Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press
topic: Mean, Artist, Self, Oleanders, Self Motivated
The question of good and evil will always be one of philosophy's most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself...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. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth cliches lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine with fuels us as a race.
- Janet Finch
topic: Father, Philosophy, Mean, Oleanders, Self Motivated
