Janet Frame

Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance.

— Janet Frame

I must go down to the seas again to find where I buried the hatchet with Yesterday.

— Janet Frame

“So I went up north to a land of palm trees and mangroves like malignant growths in the mud-filled throats of the…

— Janet Frame

“A certain pleasure was added to Grace’s relief at establishing herself as a migratory bird. She found that she understood the characters…

— Janet Frame

“I have to cry out here that language is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, that words are…

— Janet Frame

The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or…

— Janet Frame

“Life is hell, but there are prizes. ”

— Janet Frame

I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.

— Janet Frame

Listening to her, one experienced a deep uneasiness as of having avoided an urgent responsibility, like someone who, walking at night along…

— Janet Frame

I don't wish to inhabit the human world under false pretences.

— Janet Frame

People dread silence because it is transparent; like clear water, which reveals every obstacle—the used, the dead, the drowned, silence reveals the…

— Janet Frame

So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets…

— Janet Frame

She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the…

— Janet Frame

Conversation is the wall we build between ourselves and other people, too often with tired words like used and broken bottles which,…

— Janet Frame

But it is imperative, for our own survival, that we avoiid one another, and what more successful means of avoidance are there…

— Janet Frame

“I tried to say beware the room is laid with traps and hung with hooks.”

— Janet Frame

I inhabited a territory of loneliness which resembles the place where the dying spend their time before death, and from where those…

— 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…

— Janet Frame

I have always disliked the morning, it is too responsible a time, with the daylight demanding that it be 'faced' and (usually…

— Janet Frame

Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of…

— Janet Frame

“Both formality and dinner forgotten we sat on the floor of the little library, choosing. Sometimes Dr Portman read passages aloud and…

— Janet Frame

“It is my trade," he said. "I work for the bean family, and every day there are deaths among the beans, mostly…

— Janet Frame

“They have said that we owe allegiance to Safety, that he is our Red Cross who will provide us with ointment and…

— Janet Frame

“I don't wish to inhabit the world under false pretences. I'm relieved to have discovered my identity after being so confused about…

— Janet Frame

...When our thoughts revolve we are so often deceived into supposing that their violent movement is an indication of their vigorous originality,…

— Janet Frame