Petals on the Wind
Quotes from the Book
Love doesn't always come when you want it to. Sometimes it just happens, despite your will.
We lived in the attic, Christopher, Cory, Carrie, and me, Now there are only three.
People make the rules of society, not God.
Children are very wise intuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends.
There is no hate such as that born out of love betrayed- and my brain screamed out for revenge.
At the end of the rainbow waited the pot of gold. But rainbows were made of faint and fragile gossamer-and gold weighed a ton-and since the world began, gold was the reason to do most anything.
People never really died. They only went on to a better place, to wait a while for their loved ones to join them. And then once more they went back to the world, in the same way they had arrived the first time around.
Love … I put so much faith in it. Truth … I kept believing it falls always from the lips of the one you love and trust the most. Faith … it’s all bound up to love and trust. Where does one end and the other start, and how do you tell when love is the blindest of all?
And when I fall in love,” I began, "I will build a mountain to touch the sky. Then, my lover and I will have the best of both worlds, reality firmly under our feet, while we have our heads in the clouds with all our illusions still intact. And the purple grass will grow all around, high enough to reach our eyes.
It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like the sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. 'Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine.' Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic.
What's done is done. Say good-bye to the past, and hello to the future And we're wasting time, when already we've wasted enough. We've got everything ahead, waiting for us." Just the right words to make me feel real, alive, free! Free enough to forget thoughts of revenge.
Patience. I colored patience gray, hung over with black clouds. I colored hope yellow, just like the sun we could see for a few short morning hours. Too soon the sun rose high in the sky & disappeared from view, leaving us bereft and staring at blue.
Through books Cathy and I have lived a zillion lives . . . our vicarious way to feel alive.
And why is it all men think everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain silly drivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of finding the perfect love?
People have a way of believing nothing terrible will ever happen to them, only to others.
Where was that fragile, golden-fair Dresden doll I used to be? Gone. Gone like porcelain turned into steel-made into someone who would always get what she wanted, no matter who or what stood in her way.
I don't think she's ever coming back.
I love you,” was his reply. “I make myself keep on loving you, despite what you do. I've got to love you. We all have to love you, and believe in you, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us.
Love doesn’t always come when you want it to. Sometimes it just happens, despite your will.
To believe in God is a good thing, a right thing. But when you reinforce your belief with words you take from the Old Testament that you seek out, and interpret in the ways that suit your needs best, that is hypocrisy,
I am a pretty, useless ornament who always believed she'd have a man to take care of her.
Love, when it came and knocked on my door, was going to be enough. And that unknown author who'd written that if you had fame, it was not enough, and if you had wealth as well, it was still not enough, and if you had fame, wealth, and also love ... still it was not enough - boy, did I feel sorry for him.
It was the eyes. The secret of love was in the eyes, the way one person looked at another, the way eyes communicated and spoke when the lips never moved.
Perhaps lovers aren't supposed to look down at the ground. That kind of story is told in symbols--and earth represents reality, and reality represents frustrations, chance illnesses, death, murder, and all kinds of other tragedies. Lovers are meant to look up at the sky, for up there no beautiful illusions can be trampled upon.
And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself.
We don’t anticipate accidents, nor do we expect to die young.
And somewhere in that crimson-colored never-never land where i pirouetted madly, in a wild and crazy effort to exhaust myself into insensibility, i saw that man, shadowy and distant, half-hidden behind towering white columns that rose clear up to a purple sky. In a passionate pas de deux he danced with me, forever apart, no matter how hard i sought to draw nearer and leap into his arms, where i could feel them protective about me, supporting me ... and with him i'd find, at last, a safe place to live and love.
Did you know?
- It was V. C. Andrews's debut novel and the first book in the Dollanganger series.
- Andrews suggested the story was based on a true account, fueling decades of speculation about its origins.
- The novel was included on the BBC's 2003 "Big Read" list of the UK's best-loved novels.
- It has been adapted into film twice, in 1987 and as a 2014 Lifetime television movie.
- The narrator, Cathy, describes the children as 'flowers in the attic,' which gives the book its title.
About V.C. Andrews
More by V.C. Andrews
All books by V.C. Andrews →About the book
"Flowers in the Attic," first published in 1979, is the debut novel of V. C. Andrews and the book that launched the bestselling Dollanganger series. Narrated by Cathy Dollanganger, it follows four siblings whose comfortable life collapses when their father dies. Their mother, seeking to reconcile with her estranged, wealthy father and secure her inheritance, hides the children away in a locked room and adjoining attic of the sprawling Foxworth family mansion, promising the arrangement will only be temporary.
As months stretch into years, the children endure confinement, cruelty at the hands of their rigid grandmother, and a mother whose visits grow steadily colder. Deprived of freedom and sunlight, the four learn that their parents were half-relatives and that their continued imprisonment is bound up with the family fortune. The novel's central themes are the corrosive power of secrets and greed, the loss of childhood innocence, and the fierce, complicated bonds that form among siblings left to raise one another in isolation.
The book became a runaway commercial success and a defining title of Gothic family melodrama, spawning four sequels and a prequel and inspiring film and television adaptations. Its lurid subject matter made it a controversial and widely discussed novel, frequently passed among young readers, and it remains one of the most recognizable works of American popular fiction from its era, earning a place on the BBC's 2003 "Big Read" list of best-loved novels.
Key characters
- Cathy DollangangerNarrator and protagonist, an aspiring ballerina
- Chris Dollanganger Jr.The older brother, who dreams of becoming a doctor
- Cory DollangangerOne of the young twins confined in the attic
- Carrie DollangangerThe other young twin confined in the attic
- CorrineThe children's mother, who confines them to win her inheritance
- Olivia FoxworthThe cruel, controlling grandmother
- Malcolm FoxworthThe domineering, ailing grandfather
Book details
- First published
- 1979
- Length
- 400 pages
- Reading time
- 24 hours
- Author
- V.C. Andrews
- Genre
- Fiction
- Goodreads rating
- 3.86 (244k ratings) →
- First line
- “It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like the sun we seldom saw.”
Series & reading order
- 1 Flowers in the Attic
- 2 Petals on the Wind
- 3 If There Be Thorns
- 4 Seeds of Yesterday
- 5 Garden of Shadows
Movie & TV adaptations
- IMDb
- IMDb
If you liked this, read…
- 1Petals on the WindThe direct sequel continuing the Dollanganger siblings' story
- 2We Have Always Lived in the CastleAnother Gothic tale of an isolated family and its dark secrets
- 3The Thorn BirdsA sweeping family saga of forbidden love and generational secrets
Keep reading
Petals on the Wind
Love Walked in
Practical Magic
Loving Frank
Trust: Betrayed
When the World Tips Over
The Valley of Amazement
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
The History of Love
The Gravity of Us
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
Perennials
Belong to Me
The Last Song
The Book of Love
Making Faces
Requiem
Love, in English
Garden Spells
Teardrop
The Lovely Bones
Anastasia
The Dead Romantics
Every Heart a Doorway
A Small Indiscretion
The Wedding
This Side of Paradise
The Choice
Jazz
Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories
Lisey's Story
What I Loved
On Mystic Lake
Arch of Triumph
Under the Udala Trees
Eat, Pray, Love
First Love
P.S. I Love You
Bone Gap
On Beauty
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Dearest Josephine
Anna Karenina
On the Other Side
The Lost Wife
White Oleander
Mr. Fox
Ten Thousand Skies Above You
Elsewhere
Grayson's Vow
Our Chemical Hearts
The Love That Split the World
Annabel
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
The Paris Wife
Little Women
The Hundred Secret Senses
Second Glance
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Everything Is Illuminated

