“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.” Her eyes were closed. Beads of water decorated her face, and her hair spread out from her head like jellyfish tendrils. “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. It’s so soothing. I feel infinitely better now.”

– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 32

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

He had bars on all the windows now. She stroked his new security door with the pads of her fingers like it was fur. “Taste his fear. It tastes just like champagne. Cold and crisp and absolutely without sweetness.”

– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 32

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

It was as if I was blind and she’d told me, sight doesn’t matter, it’s just as well you can’t see.

– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 23

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

That was Ingrid Magnussen. She made up rules and suddenly they were engraved on the Rosetta Stone, they’d been brought to the surface from a cave under the Dead Sea, they were inscribed on scrolls from the T’ang Dynasty.

– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 20

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

I had seen girls clamor for new clothes and complain about what their mothers made for dinner. 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, White Oleander, page 13

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

I didn’t want to remind her that I was the reason she was trapped in electric bills and kid’s shoes grown too small, the reason she was clawing at the windows like Michaels dying tomatoes. 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.

– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 12

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter’s hand.

– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 11

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company

My mother was not herself in the time of the Santa Anas. I was twelve years old and I was afraid for her.

– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 7

Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company