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Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 20

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I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.

I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.

Jeanette Winterson
Mother, Sex, Book
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.38, Random House

It's the cliches that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression.

Jeanette Winterson
Expression, Causes, Emotion

Literature offers us all, writers and readers, the best method of discovering and retelling the changing story of ourselves. The story is both journey and surprise. And as everyone knows, even the past is altered, depending on, not the facts, but the interpretation.

Jeanette Winterson
Past, Journey, Stories

In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.

Jeanette Winterson
Heart, Hands, Talking

There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain.

Jeanette Winterson
Complaining, Treats, Certain
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.171, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

We heal up through being loved, and through loving others. We don't heal by forming a secret society of one - by assessing about the only other 'one' we might admit, and being doomed to disappointment.

Jeanette Winterson
Disappointment, Secret, Might

Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.

Jeanette Winterson
Hurt, Memories, Thinking

By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.

Jeanette Winterson
Betrayal, Mean, Your Side
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.171, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

To me, these days will never end. I am always there, in that room with her, or if not I, the imprint of myself - my fossil-love

Jeanette Winterson
Rooms, Fossils, Ends

Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

Jeanette Winterson
Wall, Fall, Limits
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.112, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.

Jeanette Winterson
Children, Choices, Parent
"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 2012.

I did not realize that when money becomes a core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left.

Jeanette Winterson
Community, Mind, Important
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.140, Random House

She was a monster, but she was my monster.

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

What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home.

Jeanette Winterson
Home, Heart, Want
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.207, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way.

Jeanette Winterson
Children, Unconditional Love, Love Is

To create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement.

Jeanette Winterson
Appreciation, Appreciate, Supplements
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.46, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness. We gamble. Some do it at the gaming table, some do not. You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play.

Jeanette Winterson
Fun, Winning, Humanness Is
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.73, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.

Jeanette Winterson
Justice, Diversity, Measurement

I can't catch her by copying her, I can't draw her with a borrowed stencil. She is all the things a lover should be and quite a few a lover should not. Pin her down? She's not a butterfly. I'm not a wrestler. She's not a target. I'm not a gun. Tell you what she is? She's not Lot no. 27 and I'm not one to brag.

Jeanette Winterson
Butterfly, Gun, Copying

I’m not club-able, you see. I don’t like literary parties and literary gatherings and literary identities. I’d hate to join anything, however loosely.

Jeanette Winterson
Hate, Party, Identity

Nothing has an unlikely quality. It is heavy.

Jeanette Winterson
Quality, Emptiness, Unlikely

I write about sex because often it feels like the most important thing in the world.

Jeanette Winterson
Sex, Writing, Important

Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.

Jeanette Winterson
Art, Animal, Past
Jeanette Winterson (1995). “Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd”, Knopf

When we let ourselves respond to poetry, to music, to pictures, we are clearing a space where new stories can root, in effect we are clearing a space for new stories about ourselves.

Jeanette Winterson
Space, Roots, Stories

For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion - in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence. We are not robots...but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgement.

Jeanette Winterson
Cutting, Thinking, Clouds

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