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Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 13

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You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?

You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?

Jeanette Winterson
Heart, Giving, Asking

And so, from the first, we separated our pleasure. She lay on the rug and I lay at right angles to her so that only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all things pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture.

Jeanette Winterson
Sweet, Kissing, Focus

The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark. When you look closely, the twenty-four hour day is framed into a moment; the still-life of the jerky amphetamine world. That woman-a pieta. Those men, rough angels with an unknown message. The children holding hands, spanning time. And in every still-life, there is a story, the story that tells you everything you need to know.

Jeanette Winterson
Children, Lying, Angel
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There's no such thing as effortless beauty - you should know that. There's no effort which is not beautiful - lifting a heavy stone or loving you. Loving you is like lifting a heavy stone. It would be easier not to do it and I'm not quite sure why I am doing it. It takes all my strength and all my determination, and I said I wouldn't love someone again like this. Is there any sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance?

Jeanette Winterson
Beautiful, Determination, Loving Someone

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Home, Rereading

Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar.

Jeanette Winterson
Peculiar, Form, Capacity

Why did I walk so purposefully in a straight line? Where would it take me? He went round and round and we got there all the same.

Jeanette Winterson
Lines, Take Me, Walks
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The World And Other Places”, p.3, Random House

Why is the measure of love loss?

Jeanette Winterson
Loss, Grieving, Love Loss
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery”, p.111, Random House

I was the place where you anchored. I was the deep water where you could be weightless. I was the surface where you saw your own reflection. You scooped me up in your hands.

Jeanette Winterson
Reflection, Hands, Deep Water

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.

Jeanette Winterson
Life Changing, Ideas, Decision

Now that I have lost you I cannot allow you to develop, you must be a photograph not a poem.

Jeanette Winterson
Photograph, Lost, Lost You
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.119, Random House

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

Jeanette Winterson
People, Devil, Monsters
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.105, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

I dreamed I was a single moment in a single day. A note struck and vanished. A sounding. A reckoning. Gone.

Jeanette Winterson
Gone, Moments, Reckoning
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The World And Other Places”, p.108, Random House

Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.

Jeanette Winterson
Want, Orlando, Missionary
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery”, p.49, Random House

What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning?

Jeanette Winterson
Feels
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.51, Random House

The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story – of course that is how we all live, it’s the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It’s like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It’s like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you – and it can’t, and it shouldn’t, because something is missing.

Jeanette Winterson
Baby, Book, Reading
"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson, www.abc.net.au. 2011.

There's so little wonder left in the world because we've seen everything one way or another'.

Jeanette Winterson
World, Littles, Way
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.127, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Jeanette Winterson
Real, Apples, Way

I think of love as a force of nature-as strog as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming,as drought-making as it is life-giving.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Giving, Sun
Jeanette Winterson (2004). “Lighthousekeeping”, Fourth Estate (GB)

I looked at my palms trying to see the other life, the parallel life. The point at which my selves broke away and one married a fat man and the other stayed here.

Jeanette Winterson
Men, Self, Trying

I realised something important: whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.

Jeanette Winterson
Taken, Important, Safe
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.41, Random House

I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it.

Jeanette Winterson
Emotional, Thinking, Servant Of God
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.170, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

What I wanted to do was to fasten my index finger and thumb at the bolts of your collar bone, push out, spread the web of my hand until it caught against your throat. You asked me if I wanted to strangle you. No, I wanted to fit you, not just in the obvious ways but in so many indentations.

Jeanette Winterson
Hands, Thumbs, Way

Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door.

Jeanette Winterson
Sight, Doors, Wonderful

To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run.

Jeanette Winterson
Running, Discovery
Jeanette Winterson (2017). “Love: Vintage Minis”, p.52, Random House

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