A Quote by Janet Frame

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

Quote Topics

About Beach Black Brushes Chimney Come Go Grew Herself Inside Like Little Mattered More More And More Out Really See She Shellfish Silent Them Then Those Touch

Quote Author

Janet Frame
New Zealander - Writer
August 28, 1924 - January 29, 2004

The public wanted a fairy princess to come and touch them and everything would turn to gold. Little did they realise that the individual is crucifying herself inside because she didn't think she was good enough.

Princess Diana

These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her poems. 'Inside, inside,' she would whisper quietly to herself when she felt the urge to tell.

Alice Sebold

I've always thought of characters like advent calendars. You have Christmas and you have all the little doors over the windows and every day you're allowed to open one more as it gets towards Christmas and you see more and more about what's inside that house.I remember as a kid being fascinated by that and I've always thought of my character as a little bit like that. I like to have secrets and slowly let those secrets out to the audience, sometimes never let them out, but let them see as you open the shutters, open and see a little bit more of a character.

Jeremy Irons

Then she would be done with J. D. Jameson forever. No more having to prove herself; no more of those pesky jitters she felt whenever she saw him at work—something like butterflies in her stomach, it was actually quite annoying; no more stress; no more fights in the library; and definitely no more sexy I’m-gonna-kiss-you-now-woman blue-eyed heated gazes. She had no idea why she just thought that.

Julie James

She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one's childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.

Shirley Jackson

...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was like and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside of herself.

Toni Morrison

She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

Terry Pratchett

When a woman buys shoes, she takes them out of the box and looks at herself in the mirror. But she isn't really looking at her shoes - she's looking at herself. If she likes herself, then she likes the shoes.

Christian Louboutin

If the stories don't come from the inside out, then Bridget [Jones] is not being true to herself and it's very important to me that she stays that way.

Helen Fielding

...fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)

Toni Morrison

When I'm with my wife, I know she's a beautiful woman. I know that, and more than that, it's what she is inside. She's beautiful inside; she loves music like I do. That's the thing that brought us together and probably keeps us together.

Ronnie Milsap

She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within.

David Wroblewski

He began to trace a pattern on the table with the nail of his thumb. "She kept saying she wanted to keep things exactly the way they were, and that she wished she could stop everything from changing. She got really nervous, like, talking about the future. She once told me that she could see herself now, and she could also see the kind of life she wanted to have - kids, husband, suburbs, you know - but she couldn't figure out how to get from point A to point B.

Jodi Picoult

I think it's important that kids see another kid - Coraline - who doesn't have guns, she doesn't have super-powers, she's not a super-genius. To see a pretty normal kid - I mean, she's probably a little more curious, a little more stubborn, but she's a real kid - go up against something that's truly dark and evil and powerful. And she does win.

Henry Selick

I think a lot of people don't actually know me. They think, 'She's like this,' or, 'She's like that.' They say I have no emotions - I do, but you couldn't see them then. I had to keep them inside.