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Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 12

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St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry. She wanted to be a nun. She hoped I would be a priest and saved to give me an education while my friends

St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry. She wanted to be a nun. She hoped I would be a priest and saved to give me an education while my friends plaited rope and trailed after the plough. I can't be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I'm not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion? She says he can. Then he should.

Jeanette Winterson
Mother, Passion, Heart
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.9, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

Jeanette Winterson
Heart, Perfect, Holy Grail

What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?

Jeanette Winterson
Findings, Humiliating, Objects
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “The Passion”, p.147, Random House

It doesn't have to be like that but mostly it is.

Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.13, Random House

Mankind, I hazard, wherever found, Civilized or Savage, cannot keep to any purpose for much length of time, except the purpose of destroying himself.

Jeanette Winterson
Hazards, Savages, Purpose

This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.

Jeanette Winterson
Love Is, Stories, Way
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.142, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

This is a quantum universe ... neither random nor determined. It is potential at every second. All you can do is intervene.

Jeanette Winterson
Determined, Quantum, Every Second

When people looked at him they had the feeling of being shut out. He did not shut them out. He shut himself in.

Jeanette Winterson
People, Feelings
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.107, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then.

Jeanette Winterson
Literature, Dies, Our Lives

Today we are all speeding under the golden arms of the arches into our city, into our lives, into the world that is a stream of information, ceaselessly collected and projected.

Jeanette Winterson
Cities, Arms, Information

I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Jeanette Winterson
Truth, Thinking, Psychosis
"Redemption songs" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

I used to think marriage was a plate-glass window just begging for a brick.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Glasses, Bricks

Going back after a long time will make you made, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Long, People

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Literature, Fables
"Redemption songs". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.

Jeanette Winterson
Literature, Lasts, Ifs

Names are still magic; even Sharon, Karen, Darren, and Warren are magic to somebody somewhere. In fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.

Jeanette Winterson
Fairy Stories, Names, Magic

Words like passion and ecstasy, we learn them but they stay flat on the page. Sometimes we try to turn them over, find out what's on the other side, and everyone has a story to tell os a woman or a brothel or an opium night or a war. We fear it. We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, War, Passion

The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

Jeanette Winterson
Time, Lasts, Speak

With animal behavior, they're all fine until you introduce some rogue element into the cage, and then they go crazy.

Jeanette Winterson
Crazy, Animal, Elements

The key to happiness, she said, is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.' `What if those who do not do as you do are gunning you down?' I said.... Alaska frowned. `Guns are intolerant. Guns are a failure of communication.

Jeanette Winterson
Communication, Gun, Alaska

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

Jeanette Winterson
Confidence, Reality, Usual
"Redemption songs" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness.

Jeanette Winterson
Men, Idols, Sides

I have set off and found that there is no end to even the simplest journey of the mind. I begin, and straight away a hundred alternative routes present themselves. I choose one, no sooner begin, than a hundred more appear. Every time I try to narrow down my intent I expand it, and yet those straits and canals still lead me to the open sea, and then I realize how vast it all is, this matter of the mind. I am confounded by the shining water and the size of the world.

Jeanette Winterson
Journey, Sea, Water
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.115, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Nobody knows anything about Shakespeare the person. It's all legend, it is all rumor.

Jeanette Winterson
Rumor, Literature, Legends

I don't read reviews because by then it's too late - whatever anyone says, the book won't change. It is written.

Jeanette Winterson
Change, Book, Too Late

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