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 More Quotes by Janet Fitch More Quotes From Janet Fitch Remember...we don't see objects, we see light. [...] Light can do anything water can do--flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do--paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always light in a room. Janet Fitch light artist fall My house is modern, but I like my writing room to be old fashioned. I write on a little wooden secretary desk. Janet Fitch house writing littles I've been depressed many times in my life. But under it all I'm an optimist. Janet Fitch optimist 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 senior writing teacher Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human. Janet Fitch being-human humans suffering As an artist, you can never get what you want. What you do never approaches what you want it to be. Janet Fitch what-you-want artist want As a person with terrible handwriting, I love the computer. I've waited all my life for the computer. Janet Fitch handwriting computer terrible 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 coins too-much language A book's flaws make it less predictable. Janet Fitch predictable flaws book I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to. Janet Fitch oleanders artist 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 sacrifice men way The poets are the standard bearers of language. Their work lives or dies word by word. When I write and can hear a clunky sentence, I try to write up to the poetry that I have recited beforehand. Janet Fitch poetry writing trying I love Derrick Brown for the surprise of one word waking up next to another. One moment tender, funny or romantic, the next, visceral, ironic and relevatory-here is the full chaos of life. An amazing talent. Janet Fitch ironic waking next I decided that if I was never going to sell anything as long as I lived, I might as well do what I want to do 'cause then at least I would've done what I wanted to do in life. What's that worth? Janet Fitch done writing long I emitted some civetlike female stink, a distinct perfume of sexual wanting, that he had followed to find me here in the dark. Janet Fitch smell female dark 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 desert horse kids 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 different-universes block house 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 home thinking 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 two father book I wish my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart. Janet Fitch oleanders broke wish
