Quotes by Janet Frame

Janet Frame

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.

Bags

Flow

Powerful

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.

Beach

Black

Littles

So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets — dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion.

Dream

Sleep

Sweet

The idea was to have a basin inverted on his head and his hair cut to the shape of it. Skill and money were not needed. Then the idea grew that it was more convenient to leave the basin on his head. Stray thoughts were trimmed along with stray hair; brain-vines, tentacles of thought, were not encouraged to wander. Then, in the interests of human economy, the head of adaptable man became a basin of uniform shape—a basin, a crash helmet. Safe at last; no more thought-cuts.

Cutting

Hair

Men

The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it’s a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.

Ego

Fall

Writing

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?

Able

Home

World

The strain of constant adaptation to so many fearful events and discoveries is already too much to bear with sanity; one has to keep pretending to slip successfully into the new mould; a time will come when the tailored and camouflaged mind breaks beneath the burden; the stick insect in our brains no longer cares to resemble a twig on the same habitual human tree in the mere hope that it may survive extinction.

Brain

Discovery

Tree

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.

Judgement

Light

Snow

There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.

Past

Time

Water

They think I’m going to be a schoolteacher but I’m going to be a poet.

Poet

Thinking

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Able

Accomplishment

Angel

Attention

Bags

Beach

Believe

Black

Brain

Buried

Challenges

Character

Choices

Cousin

Cutting

Darkness Within

Death

Decision

Desire

Diaries

Discovery

Division

Doe

Dream

Ego

Electricity

Eye

Fall

Fear

Flames

Flow

Freedom

Giving

Giving Up

Glasses

Hair

Hands

Haunting

Hell

Helping

Home

Humans

Ideas

Imperfect

Irrelevance

Jobs

Journey

Judgement

Land

Law

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Janet Frame

Janet Frame

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.

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.

So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets — dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion.

The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it’s a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.

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?

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.

There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.

They think I’m going to be a schoolteacher but I’m going to be a poet.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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