Home > Work > An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3) QUOTES

An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3) QUOTES

1 " All writers--all beings--are exiles as a matter of course. The certainty about living is that it is a succession of expulsions of whatever carries the life force...All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land.. "

― Janet Frame , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

2 " ...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 , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

3 " What, in all the world, could I do to earn my living and still live as myself, as I knew myself to be. Temporary masks, I knew, had their place; everyone was wearing them, they were the human rage; but not masks cemented in place until the wearer could not breathe and was eventually suffocated. "

― Janet Frame , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

4 " 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 , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

5 " I was baffled by my fuzzy hair and the attention it drew, and the urgency with which people advised that I have it 'straightened', as if it posed a threat. "

― Janet Frame , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

6 " I went towards the stairs, just as the band was playing 'Now is the Hour', and the music reached down like a long spoon inside me and stirred, and stirred. "

― Janet Frame , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

7 " The dislike of her was general. I wonder now about the treatment of psychiatric and other patients who release, as if it were a chemical, an invitation to be disliked and who therefore have to fight (inducing further dislike and antagonism) for sympathy and fairness. "

― Janet Frame , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)

8 " There is a freedom born from the acknowledgement of greatness in literature, as if one gave away what one desired to keep, and in giving, there is a new space cleared for growth, an onrush of a new season beneath a secret sun. Acknowledging any great work of art is like being in love; one walks on air; any decline, destruction, death are within, not in the beloved; it is a falling in love with immortality, a freedom, a flight in paradise. "

― Janet Frame , An Angel at my Table (Autobiography, #1-3)