I must go down to the seas again to find where I buried the hatchet with Yesterday. Janet Frame More Quotes by Janet Frame More Quotes From Janet Frame ...there must be an inviolate place where the choices and decisions, however imperfect, are the writer's own, where the decision must be as individual and solitary as birth or death. Janet Frame imperfect choices decision All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land. Janet Frame land journey lost Possibility was not a bag or box that could be closed and sealed, it was a vast open chute which received everything, everything; one could not choose or direct or destroy the powerful flow of possibility. Janet Frame bags powerful flow Death is a dramatic accomplishment of absence; language may be almost as effective. Janet Frame accomplishment may death Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance. Janet Frame irrelevance law attention It is always hard to believe that the will to change something does not produce an immediate change. Janet Frame doe desire believe time past is not time gone, it is time accumulated with the host resembling the character in the fairytale who was joined along the route by more and more characters none of whom could be separated from one another or from the host, with some stuck so fast that their presence caused physical pain. Janet Frame pain character past Electricity, the peril the wind sings to in the wires on a gray day. Janet Frame electricity wire wind I inhabited a territory of loneliness which resembles the place where the dying spend their time before death, and from where those who do return, living, to the world bring, inevitably, a unique point of view that is a nightmare, a treasure, and a lifelong possession.[It is] equal in its rapture and chilling exposure [to] the neighbourhood of the ancient gods and goddesses. Janet Frame loneliness unique views They think I'm going to be a schoolteacher but I'm going to be a poet. Janet Frame poet thinking Language, at least, may give up the secrets of life and death, leading us through the maze to the original Word as monster or angel, to the mournful place where we may meet Job and hear his cry, 'How long will you vex my soul and break me in pieces with words? Janet Frame giving-up angel jobs when I first began this diary I said I would give a record of my inner life. I begin to wonder if I have said anything about my inner life. What if I have no inner life? Janet Frame what-if diaries giving Conversation is the wall we build between ourselves and other people, too often with tired words like used and broken bottles which, catching the sunlight as they lie embedded in the wall, are mistaken for jewels. Janet Frame wall tired lying The sooner you 'settle' the sooner you'll be allowed home" was the ruling logic; and "if you can't adapt yourself to living in a mental hospital how do you expect to be able to live 'out in the world'?" How indeed? Janet Frame able home world Everything is always a story, but the loveliest ones are those that get written and are not torn up and are taken to a friend as payment for listening, for putting a wise keyhole to the ear of my mind Janet Frame taken wise listening He sees the land of meaning, and one path to it, and the so-called “normal” people traveling swiftly and in comfort to the land; he does not include the shipwrecked people who arrive by devious lonely routes, and the many who dwell in the land in the beginning. Janet Frame lonely land people The sun is all love and murder, judgement, the perpetual raid of conscience, paratrooping light which opens like a snow-blossom in the downward drift of death. Wherever I turn - the golden cymbals of judgement, the summoning of the torturers of light. Janet Frame judgement light snow Much of living is an attempt to preserve oneself by annexing and occupying others. Janet Frame preserves oneself When our thoughts revolve we are so often deceived into supposing that their violent movement is an indication of their vigorous originality, the upheaval of prejudice and fixed ideas, when all the time it is more likely that the machine which contains them is only an elaborate cement-mixer, and when the thinking is finished, those whirling thoughts are smoothed into the unchanged conventional mould and seeing them set solid enough to dance, to build, to travel upon, we would never dream of their first deceit, of the hope once roused by their apparently violent reorganisation. Janet Frame dream ideas thinking She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don’t come out. Janet Frame black littles beach
