Christ's right-hand woman

"I went recently into Takapuna to see Frank and we had dinner at the

Chinese restaurant and he spent all dinnertime telling me what is

wrong with my writing. I was furious. He wouldn’t shut up. Perhaps

I invite that kind of treatment. I would never dream of trying to tell

him how to write. I guess I just have to be tolerant and do as my

mother taught me, find excuses for the behaviour of people. She used

to call it ‘charity’. Be charitable, she said. (She had the idea she was

Christ’s right-hand woman.)" 

~ Janet Frame to Bill Brown, 1973

From Janet Frame in Her Own Words (Penguin 2011)

(In memory of Janet's mother Lottie C. Frame who died on the 2nd December 1955.)