Authors:

Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 15

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 had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.

I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.

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

The stories we sit up late to hear are love stories. It seems that we cannot know enough about this riddle of our lives. We go back and back to the same scenes, the same words, trying to scrape out the meaning. Nothing could be more familiar than love. Nothing else eludes us so completely.

Jeanette Winterson
Elude Us, Trying, Meaning Nothing

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

Jeanette Winterson
Change, Writing, Groups

I think every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn't bother to do it. It is a message in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It's saying, 'I'm here and I believe that you are somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime.'

Jeanette Winterson
Art, Believe, Dark
Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

My friends and the people who are close to me know what I am. And that is enough.

Jeanette Winterson
Friends, People, Enough

I walked out to brood on this life of ours, which seems from birth to death to be a steady loss, disguised by sudden gains and happiness, which persuade us of good fortune, when all the while the glass is emptying.

Jeanette Winterson
Loss, Glasses, Gains

No emotion is the final one.

Jeanette Winterson
Finals, Emotion
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.49, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time.

Jeanette Winterson
Boxing, Leaving, Stories
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.93, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved.

Jeanette Winterson
Grief, Hole In My Heart, Over It

There are only three possible endings -aren't there? - to any story: revenge, tragedy or forgiveness. That's it. All stories end like that.

Jeanette Winterson
Revenge, Tragedy, Three

Anything outside marriage seems like freedom and excitement.

Jeanette Winterson
Literature, Excitement, Seems
"Redemption songs" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 22004.

They believed that if a mouse found your hair clippings and built a nest with them you got a headache. If the nest was big enough, you might go mad.

Jeanette Winterson
Hair, Mad, Nests
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.4, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

When I was born, my father wanted to drown me, but my mother persuaded him to let me live in disguise, to see if I could bring any wealth to the household.

Jeanette Winterson
Mother, Father, Wealth
2000 The. Power Book.

Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

Jeanette Winterson
Born, Pundits, Stamps

When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.

Jeanette Winterson
Gun, Iron, Smell
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.136, Random House

the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.

Jeanette Winterson
Buddhist, Way, Complicated
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.115, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Capitalism is like Japanese Knotweed: nothing kills it off. If there were only two people left on the planet, one of them would find a way of making money out of the other.

Jeanette Winterson
Two, People, Way

I struggled in my mind with all kinds of defenses. Should I be hurt? Surprised? Should I laugh it off? I wanted to say something cruel to expiate my anger and to justify myself. But it's difficult with old friends; difficult because it's so easy. You know one another as well as lovers do and you have had less to pretend about. I poured myself a drink and shrugged. 'Nothing's perfect.

Jeanette Winterson
Hurt, Perfect, Laughing

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Book, World

I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject.

Jeanette Winterson
Hurt, Walking Away, Rejection
Jeanette Winterson (2010). “Weight”, p.98, Canongate Books

Their throats were bare for God.

Jeanette Winterson
Throat

However it is debased or misinterpreted, love is a redemptive feature. To focus on one individual so that their desires become superior to yours is a very cleansing experience.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Focus, Desire

Louise, I would gladly fire the past for you, go and not look back. I have been reckless before, never counting the cost, oblivious to the cost. Now, I've done the sums ahead. I know what it will mean to redeem myself from the accumulations of a lifetime. I know and I don't care. You set before me a space uncluttered by association. It might be a void or it might be a release. Certainly I want to take the risk. I want to take the risk because the life I have stored up is going mouldy.

Jeanette Winterson
Mean, Past, Space

Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.

Jeanette Winterson
Cosmos, Literature, Want

She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings. She knew the Eiffel Tower was a hideous symbol of phallic oppression but when ordered by her commander to detonate the lift so that no-one should unthinkingly scale an erection, her mind filled with young romantics gazing over Paris and opening aerograms that said Je t'aime.

Jeanette Winterson
Beautiful, Blow, Paris
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.21, Random House

You May Also Like: