Janet Fitch Quotes

Powerful Janet Fitch for Daily Growth

About Janet Fitch

**Janet Fitch**: A compelling storyteller of contemporary literature, Janet Fitch was born on August 4, 1953, in California, United States. Her childhood was marked by a turbulent family life, which she would later draw upon to create her captivating fictional narratives. Fitch attended Vassar College, where she honed her writing skills, and later earned an MFA from the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop. These formative years laid the foundation for her unique storytelling style, blending elements of historical fiction, romance, and psychological drama. Her breakthrough novel, "White Oleander" (2001), catapulted Fitch into literary stardom. The book, a gripping exploration of a young girl's journey through a series of foster homes following her mother's imprisonment, was a finalist for the National Book Award and was later adapted into a film. Fitch followed "White Oleander" with "Paint It Black" (2006), a dark tale of love, loss, and mourning. Her latest novel, "The Revolution of Marina M." (2018), is a sweeping epic set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. Throughout her career, Fitch has been influenced by a diverse range of authors, including Fyodor Dostoevsky, Emily Dickinson, and Virginia Woolf. Her works often delve into themes of family dynamics, the complexities of love, and the human capacity for resilience and transformation. Today, Janet Fitch continues to enchant readers with her richly textured narratives, offering a profound exploration of the human condition through the lens of captivating storytelling.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"Life is flexible, and we must learn to bend with it."

The quote underscores the importance of adaptability in navigating life's complexities. It suggests that instead of resisting change or obstacles, we should strive to flexibly adapt our responses to them, much like a plant bends in the wind. This flexibility allows us to find balance and harmony even amid adversity, fostering resilience and promoting personal growth. In essence, it's a call to embrace change and be open to new possibilities as we journey through life.

"Love is a house, a shelter, a port in a storm."

This quote by Janet Fitch suggests that love provides emotional stability, safety, and protection, much like a house does during harsh weather conditions. Love serves as a refuge from life's hardships, offering comfort and solace in times of need. In essence, love is an anchor in the midst of stormy situations, providing warmth, security, and resilience when faced with adversity.

"The arts are the universal language of humankind."

This quote by Janet Fitch emphasizes the inherent ability of artistic expression to transcend cultural, linguistic, and geographical boundaries. Art, in its various forms (literature, music, visual art, dance, etc.), has a unique power to connect and communicate across diverse human experiences. It serves as a universal medium for understanding and empathizing with one another, thereby fostering unity and mutual appreciation among all of humankind.

"Fate throws dice, and sometimes they land on snake-eyes."

This quote by Janet Fitch suggests that life's outcomes are often unpredictable and can be unfavorable, much like rolling double ones (snake-eyes) on a pair of dice. It underscores the idea that despite our best efforts and plans, we may encounter unexpected challenges or hardships. However, it also implies a sense of resilience, as one must learn to navigate through these difficulties in order to grow and find their path forward.

"And as I sat there beneath that tree, the leaves whispering secrets into my ear, I felt a strange conviction growing within me. I was not destined to be happy; it was not written in the cards for me. But I would survive."

In this quote by Janet Fitch, the protagonist is acknowledging that happiness might not be her life's destiny but is choosing resilience instead. She accepts her circumstances, yet finds strength in them. The tree symbolizes growth, wisdom, and endurance, as it continues to flourish despite facing various challenges - a metaphor for the protagonist's journey. The "strange conviction" growing within her suggests an acceptance of fate but with a determined spirit to survive. It emphasizes that life may not always be fair or happy, but one can still find resilience and persevere through adversity.

A cliche is like a coin that has been handled too much. Once language has been overly handled, it no longer leaves a clear imprint.

- Janet Fitch

Clear, Like, Been, Imprint

My mother never met a gadget she didn't like. There were tube pans for baking the angel food cakes my father could have after his first heart attack, and Bundt pans and loaf pans and baking pans and grilling pans.

- Janet Fitch

Father, Angel, Gadget, Baking

Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb.

- Janet Fitch

Run, Bomb, Use, Stocking

I write every day, including weekends. For writers, there are no weekends. It's just that your family is around, looking mournful, wondering when you're going to pay attention to them.

- Janet Fitch

Every Day, Weekends, I Write, Mournful

I kept sending out stories and getting rejected.

- Janet Fitch

Stories, Getting, Rejected, Sending

You start realizing that good prose is crunchy. There's texture in your mouth as you say it. You realize bad writing, bland writing, has no texture, no taste, no corners in your mouth. I'm a great believer in reading aloud.

- Janet Fitch

Bad, Texture, Prose, Realizing

Amazon is a marvelous conglomeration and delivery system for products of every imaginable function. But the book 'business' is really not the same as the sale of lawn rakes or adapters for telephones.

- Janet Fitch

Business, Book, Delivery, Telephones

My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers. Every two weeks, he'd take me to our local branch library and pull books off the shelf for me, stacking them up in my arms - 'Have you read this? And this? And this?'

- Janet Fitch

Father, Weeks, Literary, Two Weeks

Women writers specifically... are the ultimate outsiders.

- Janet Fitch

Ultimate, Women Writers, Specifically

As a person with terrible handwriting, I love the computer. I've waited all my life for the computer.

- Janet Fitch

Love, My Life, Waited, Handwriting

Your protagonist is your reader's portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you're creating. They don't have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering.

- Janet Fitch

Thinking, Your, Reader, Wondering

As a middle-aged woman who has had some luck as a writer, I'd like this profession of author to remain a possibility for young writers in the future - and not become an arena solely for the hobbyist or the well-heeled.

- Janet Fitch

Woman, Some, Profession, Young Writers

My house is modern, but I like my writing room to be old fashioned. I write on a little wooden secretary desk.

- Janet Fitch

Old, Like, I Write, Wooden

I send all my short fiction to 'Ontario Review' because Joyce Carol Oates is associate editor there, and I think she's fantastic.

- Janet Fitch

Think, I Think, Editor, Ontario

It's your flaws, not your strengths, that go down in the depths of your books. You're exposed, like dreaming you're naked in a public building.

- Janet Fitch

Go, Dreaming, Like, Depths

I think that Oprah's on a mission to improve the lives of the average American in various ways. And one of them is to bring literature to people who would normally not be quite as demanding in their reading tastes, to show them writing that can be more than just entertainment.

- Janet Fitch

Average, I Think, Tastes, Normally

Use description of landscape to help you establish the emotional tone of the scene. Keep notes of how other authors establish mood and foreshadow events by describing the world around the character.

- Janet Fitch

Tone, Other, Notes, Establish

A figure in Los Angeles politics for five decades, my mother nevertheless had had her fill of talking to people by the time she came home at night.

- Janet Fitch

Politics, By The Time, Decades

For me, I'd rather be the inventive one, and if something doesn't work, I'll go back to the workshop, put it on the bench, and pound on it for awhile.

- Janet Fitch

Work, Bench, Rather, Pound

While out on the perimeter, women discovered the freedom of badlands. They were curiously free to invent, without having to liberate themselves from the forms and rewards of the cultural norm.

- Janet Fitch

Discovered, Having, Invent, Forms

My perfect day would be to go on a picnic up Mt. Wilson with Christopher Isherwood, Greta Garbo, Aldous Huxley, and Bertrand Russell.

- Janet Fitch

Perfect, Go, Wilson, Picnic

Many women get involved with a man that you pretty much know isn't suitable and you're kind of breaking your rules, but he's attractive in some unknown way. And then he doesn't even realize what a sacrifice you're making by being with him and he dumps you!

- Janet Fitch

Rules, Some, Your, Suitable

Most women experience issues of power and sexuality, but very few women talk about it. There's the threat of the loss of approval.

- Janet Fitch

Sexuality, Approval, Very, Few Women

The thing that makes vivid writing is when the reader is in the body of the story, the body of the character. Things smell like something; there's weather, there's texture, there's light.

- Janet Fitch

Like, Texture, Reader, Vivid

A book's flaws make it less predictable.

- Janet Fitch

Book, Predictable, Less, Flaws

We don't have a unitary society anymore, you know; it's very fragmented. I look up and down my block in Silverlake and there is a different universe in every house.

- Janet Fitch

Look, Anymore, Very, Up And Down

When working on your own, you can make a choice and find out six months later that you made a bad choice. But when you work with people you trust, who understand your obsessions, you can take risks.

- Janet Fitch

Trust, Six, Months, Obsessions

Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don't want people to know.

- Janet Fitch

Work, Deep, Want, Revulsion

It's a lot to expect of yourself, to write a novel in a year. Anyway, you don't write a novel, you write a scene, and then another scene.

- Janet Fitch

Year, Another, Then, Novel

I never know how a novel is going to end, because you don't really know what's going to be at the bottom of a novel until you excavate it.

- Janet Fitch

Going, Bottom, Really, Novel

When you have success, people think you know what you're doing, and you start to agree with them, you think you can conquer the world. But you go from grandiosity to panic.

- Janet Fitch

Conquer, Doing, Think, Panic

I've been depressed many times in my life. But under it all I'm an optimist.

- Janet Fitch

My Life, Been, Times, Depressed

My mother had been a solitary chef. It was her recreation and her escape.

- Janet Fitch

Mother, Her, Been, Escape

Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.

- Janet Fitch

Memory, Fourth, Any, Dimension

I'm particularly fond of the Mulholland Fountain, at Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard, when it turns colors at night.

- Janet Fitch

Night, Fountain, Boulevard, Fond

My mother was an enthusiastic chef but wildly disorganized, and often preferred purchasing yet another jar of mace or chili powder rather than having to hunt down its last incarnation.

- Janet Fitch

Hunt, Chili, Having, Wildly

A terrific exercise is to take a paragraph of someone's writing who has a really strong style, and using their structure, substitute your own words for theirs, and see how they achieved their effects.

- Janet Fitch

Strong, Paragraph, Using, Structure

The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story.

- Janet Fitch

Love, More, Them, Lines

Crime novelists do really well with Los Angeles.

- Janet Fitch

Los, Novelists, Angeles, Los Angeles

A lot of people think they should be happy all the time. But the writer understands you need both. You need the whole piano: the richness of the whole human experience. Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human.

- Janet Fitch

Happy, Suffering, Part, Human Experience

My father gave me Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' when I was in junior high; my junior high, angst-filled soul responded to that.

- Janet Fitch

Father, Soul, Punishment, Junior

My father was an engineer - he wasn't literary, not a writer or a journalist, but he was one of the world's great readers.

- Janet Fitch

Father, World, Journalist, Readers

I despise places where you have to have an assigned seat. Makes me feel like I'm at the airport.

- Janet Fitch

Feel, Like, Makes, Assigned

I was into the music scene, but I was also a bit of a perfectionist and very hard on myself... very dark in that way.

- Janet Fitch

Myself, Very, Music Scene, Perfectionist

A novelist can get by on story, but the poet has nothing but the words.

- Janet Fitch

Words, Nothing, Get, Novelist

My thoughts about God are vague and abstract. My connection with the energy of the universe is shaky.

- Janet Fitch

Thoughts, Universe, Vague, Abstract

L.A. is such a real, active place. My mother was very into the core of the city. She worked in politics, and you have to know your territory. It's an active matrix; we're all parts of it, but people don't often stop to wonder what's going on.

- Janet Fitch

Politics, City, Very, Wonder

The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

- Janet Fitch

Good, Elegance, Admire, Screenplay

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

College, Kid, Fiction, Humiliate

As an artist, you can never get what you want. What you do never approaches what you want it to be.

- Janet Fitch

Artist, Never, Get, Approaches

To make films, you have to have boundless energy; you have to work and play with others really, really well, and I'm really a more contemplative kind of person. I like to sit at home and think, a lot.

- Janet Fitch

Play, Think, Films, Boundless

Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human.

- Janet Fitch

Suffering, Being Human, Part, Depression

I'd rather see a writer write 15 minutes a day than save it all up for a Saturday. A work gets a coating on it when it's not been worked on for a while, makes it hard to break back in.

- Janet Fitch

Saturday, Been, Rather, 15 Minutes

Nineteen is as alive as 40-plus. I can vividly remember 19 and how I saw the world.

- Janet Fitch

Remember, World, How, Nineteen

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.

- Janet Fitch

Small, Kid, Read, Horses

I have a hard time with abstractions. I always go to the personal.

- Janet Fitch

Personal, Go, Always, Hard Time

I always read poetry before I write, to sensitize me to the rhythms and music of language.

- Janet Fitch

Music, Always, Read, Rhythms

As an undergraduate, I had not studied literature - I was a history major.

- Janet Fitch

Literature, Had, Major, Studied

I use my fiction to explore my own unconscious issues. I usually don't even know what's going on with me until I'm writing. That doesn't mean my books are autobiographical.

- Janet Fitch

Explore, Going, Unconscious, Autobiographical

I started writing when I was 21. I was going to become an historian. And then I realized there was more to the world than just the past. I didn't want to spend my life in the library.

- Janet Fitch

My Life, More, Going, Library

Dostoevsky was my literary idol for a long time.

- Janet Fitch

Time, Idol, Literary, Long Time

I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.

- Janet Fitch

Feel, Like, I Write, Inspired

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

- Janet Fitch

Ideas, Every Day, I Write, Shower

I've always been concerned with what happens to children in our society when there's nobody left to take care of them.

- Janet Fitch

Always, Been, Them, Concerned

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