Authors:

Jeanette Winterson Quotes

All Quotes Art Birth Boundaries Change Character Children Choices Community Creativity Culture Death Desire Discipline Effort Falling In Love Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Giving Giving Up God Grief Growing Up Happy Endings Hate Healing Heart Home House Hurt Identity Imagination Inspirational Journey Language Leaving Life Literature Loss Love Lying Madness Memories Metaphor Morning New Beginnings Pain Passion Past Purpose Reading Reality Reflection Regret Revenge Risk Running Silence Soul Temptation Time Today Tragedy Values Waiting Wall War Water Winning Worship Writing
I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

Jeanette Winterson
Cutting, Pieces
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

Jeanette Winterson
Art, Thinking, Differences

In a world where meaning is often absent or imposed, reading offers a dialogue with ourselves, with society, with history, and with the dead.

Jeanette Winterson
Reading, World, Dialogue

You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Pain, Pregnancy

While I can’t have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I’d take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I’d wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Dream, Morning

It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.

Jeanette Winterson
Want, What You Want

But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.

Jeanette Winterson
Dark, Light, Needs
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.172, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

Jeanette Winterson
Believe, Book, Communication

Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.

Jeanette Winterson
Glasses, Expression, Break Out
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.9, Random House

To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.

Jeanette Winterson
Inspirational, World, Breakdown

There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.

Jeanette Winterson
Discovery, Risk, Values

It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.

Jeanette Winterson
Second Chance, Remember, Moments
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.19, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.

Jeanette Winterson
Years, Leaving, Another Chance
"Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 2011.

Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Home, Doors

The key to happiness ... is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.

Jeanette Winterson
Keys, Tolerance, Key To Happiness

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Jeanette Winterson
People, Misery, Miserable

As people get older they have these rigid patterns that they impose on themselves, and it kills them. They become dull, they become dead to new experience, they become afraid, biased, and bigoted. It's really simply to do with refusing new experience.

Jeanette Winterson
New Experiences, People, Dull
Source: www.raintaxi.com

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

Jeanette Winterson
Important Choices, Theory, Left Behind
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.169, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun. When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in bewilderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me. And when I had looked at myself and grown accustomed to who I was, I was not afraid to hate parts of me because I wanted to be worthy of the mirror bearer.

Jeanette Winterson
Life, Hate, Passion

In this life you have to be your own hero. By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way. Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero who’s usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don’t worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) he’ll find the treasure.

Jeanette Winterson
Clever, Stupid, Hero
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Powerbook”, p.155, Random House

I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

Jeanette Winterson
Powerful, Stupid, School

Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

Jeanette Winterson
Dog, Falling In Love, Book

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you.

Jeanette Winterson
Children, Blow, Talking
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.25, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.

Jeanette Winterson
Dream, Drama, Party

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Writing, Happens
"Redemption songs" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

You May Also Like: