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Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 21

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Language is what stops the heart exploding.

Language is what stops the heart exploding.

Jeanette Winterson
Heart, Language, Exploding
"Shafts of sunlight". www.theguardian.com. November 15, 2008.

What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Weight, Deeds

When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.

Jeanette Winterson
Regret, Mistake, Errors

And when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth. God saw it. God knows. But I am not God. And so when someone tells me what they heard or saw, I believe them, and I believe their friend who also saw, but not in the same way, and I can put these accounts together and I will not have a seamless wonder but a sandwich laced with mustard of my own.

Jeanette Winterson
Believe, Book, Taken
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.95, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must.

Jeanette Winterson
Dream, Pain
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.80, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

A bridge is a meeting place . . . a possibility, a metaphor.

Jeanette Winterson
Bridges, Metaphor, Possibility

There are those who say that temptation can be barricaded beyond the door. The ones who think that stray desires can be driven out of the heart like the moneychangers from the temple. Maybe they can, if you patrol your weak points day and night, don't look, don't smell, don't dream.

Jeanette Winterson
Dream, Heart, Thinking
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.78, Random House

Passion is for holidays, not homecoming.

Jeanette Winterson
Passion, Holiday, Homecoming
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.27, Random House

I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first.

Jeanette Winterson
Space, People, Want

Meatspace still has some advantages for a carbon-based girl.

Jeanette Winterson
Girl, Advantage, Carbon

Stories end in reverie, tragedy, or forgiveness.

Jeanette Winterson
Tragedy, Stories, Ends

The most prosaic of us betray a belief in the inward life every time we talk about 'my body' rather than 'I.

Jeanette Winterson
Inward, Body, Belief
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.100, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.

Jeanette Winterson
Men, Interesting, Feelings
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.127, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

The poet will not be satisfied with recording, the poet will have to transform.

Jeanette Winterson
Poet, Satisfied

At bed-time I went into my room and put out the light. I didn't get undressed. I lay on my bed and looked out of the window at the stars. I read in a book that the stars can take you anywhere. I've never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helmets. If I were up there on the moon, or by the Milky Way, I'd want to feel the stars round my head. I'd want them in my hair the way they are in paintings of the gods. I'd want my whole body to feel the space, the empty space and points of light. That's how dancers must feel, dancers and acrobats, just for a second, that freedom.

Jeanette Winterson
Stars, Book, Moon

Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Written
"52: Episode 29" by by Jeanette Winterson, Ali Smith, AM Homes,, www.theguardian.com. December 12, 2008.

Life is so simple when you're just doing your job.

Jeanette Winterson
Jobs, Work, Simple

One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.

Jeanette Winterson
Lying, Hate, War

We live in a world of buy it or leave it. Love does not signify.

Jeanette Winterson
Doe, World
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire. You may as well take a pop-gun to a python.

Jeanette Winterson
Marriage, Gun, Python

Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall.

Jeanette Winterson
Fall, Leaving, Misery
"Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

One just spends as much money as one has. Very peculiar that! You never actually have any money. You think, If I had this much money ten years ago, I would have thought I was amazingly rich, but I still manage to spend it all and not have any left.

Jeanette Winterson
Money, Thinking, Years

Y'know, Nature's unpredictable -- that's why we had to tame her. Maybe we went too far, but in principle we made the right decision.

Jeanette Winterson
Nature, Decision, Principles

Every second the Universe divides into possibilities and most of those possibilities never happen. It is not a uni-verse -- there is more than one reading. The story won't stop, can't stop, it goes on telling itself, waiting for an intervention that changes what will happen next.

Jeanette Winterson
Reading, Waiting, Next

Make three wishes and they shall all come true. Make three hundred and I will honour every one

Jeanette Winterson
Wish, Three, Hundred
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.19, Random House

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