List of Janet Frame Quotes

Timmy, Who Made A Daring Escape, Also Made A Mistake Of Paying The Taxi Driver With A Check Made Out Of Toilet Paper.

We Could Think Or Feel As We Wished Toward The Characters, Or As The Poet, Discounting History, Invited Us To; We Were The Poet's Guest, His World Was His Own Kingdom, Reached, As One Of The Poems Told Us, Through The 'ring Of Words.

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.

When Our Thoughts Revolve We Are So Often Deceived Into Supposing That Their Violent Movement Is An Indication Of Their Vigorous Originality, The Upheaval Of Prejudice And Fixed Ideas, When All The Time It Is More Likely That The Machine Which Contains Them Is Only An Elaborate Cement-mixer, And When The Thinking Is Finished, Those Whirling Thoughts Are Smoothed Into The Unchanged Conventional Mould And Seeing Them Set Solid Enough To Dance, To Build, To Travel Upon, We Would Never Dream Of Their First Deceit, Of The Hope Once Roused By Their Apparently Violent Reorganisation.

He Sees The Land Of Meaning, And One Path To It, And The So-called “normal” People Traveling Swiftly And In Comfort To The Land; He Does Not Include The Shipwrecked People Who Arrive By Devious Lonely Routes, And The Many Who Dwell In The Land In The Beginning.

They Think I'm Going To Be A Schoolteacher But I'm Going To Be A Poet.

Time Past Is Not Time Gone, It Is Time Accumulated With The Host Resembling The Character In The Fairytale Who Was Joined Along The Route By More And More Characters None Of Whom Could Be Separated From One Another Or From The Host, With Some Stuck So Fast That Their Presence Caused Physical Pain.

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.

Writing An Autobiography, Usually Thought Of As A Looking Back, Can Just As Well Be A Looking Across Or Through, With The Passing Of Time Giving An X-ray Quality To The Eye.

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.

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.

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.