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Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 18

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Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?

Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?

Jeanette Winterson
Life, Two, Secret
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.115, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.

Jeanette Winterson
Reading, Fiction, Passionate
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.117, Random House

And if I say to you that I am glad of everything we have done together, and sorry that we will not be here together in forty years, laughing at a faded photo of you impersonating a lion, it having withered well, you less so, as we stand fabulously old, in a city that understands what spirit it takes to be old, to be beautiful, to be much looked at, to be itself, to be never quite caught, to have a past, to be content, to have seen much, to have remained, to have continued...

Jeanette Winterson
Beautiful, Sorry, Past

Your weak point is the open, vulnerable place where you can always be hurt. Love, in all its aspects, opens the self so fully.

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

If I let them take away my demons, I'll have to give up what I've found.

Jeanette Winterson
Giving Up, Demon, Found
Jeanette Winterson (1985). “Oranges are Not the Only Fruit”

She said she’d often wondered why she wanted to do some things and not do other things at all. Well, it was obvious with some things, but for others, there was no reason there. She’d spent a long time puzzling it out, then she thought that what you’d done in a past life you didn’t need to do again, and what you had to do in the future, you wouldn’t be ready to do now.

Jeanette Winterson
Past, Long, Needs
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.155, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun.

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

August. We were arguing. You want love to be like this every day don't you? 92 degrees even in the shade.

Jeanette Winterson
August, Degrees, Want
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.12, Random House

We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.

Jeanette Winterson
Body, Remember, States
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.162, Random House

your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before you, I replied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm you play upon me, drumming me taught.

Jeanette Winterson
Strong, Heart, Play

No. Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days.

Jeanette Winterson
Life, Song, Pain

I can't do it. I've been here before and it's not a room with a view. The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal. If I don't withdraw I have no power at all. A relationship where one person has no power or negative power, isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave.

Jeanette Winterson
Views, Negative, Withdrawal

If you think about something for long enough,' she explained, `more than likely, that thing will happen.' She tapped her head. `It's all in the mind.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Long, Mind
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.30, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

The ancients believed in fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.

Jeanette Winterson
Strong, Lying, Fate
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Weight”, Canongate Books

It's not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between.

Jeanette Winterson
Space, Madness, One Thing
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.162, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Jeanette Winterson
Glasses, Air, People
"Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.

Jeanette Winterson
Mother, Children, Father
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Weight”, Canongate Books

Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Cells, Blood

Part broken - part whole, you begin again. ( from 'Why books seem shockproof against change.' THE TIMES: BOOKS)

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Broken, Begin Again

You are a pool of clear water where the light plays

Jeanette Winterson
Light, Play, Water
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.85, Random House

There’s no story that’s the start of itself.

Jeanette Winterson
Stories
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.35, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I have a head for heights it's true, but no stomach for the depths. Strange then to have plumbed so many.

Jeanette Winterson
Depth, Height, Strange
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.17, Random House

When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.

Jeanette Winterson
Love Is, Order, Drawing

I lay there, stretched out, looking at the one star visible through the tiny window of the room. Only connect. How can you do that when the connections are broken?

Jeanette Winterson
Stars, Broken, Connections
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

…I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt.

Jeanette Winterson
Sea, Sea Voyage, Voyages
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.15, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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