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Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 4

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What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and

What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsibile, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. And I think it means love.

Jeanette Winterson
Art, Children, Mean

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Water, Neglect
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.186, Random House

There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.

Jeanette Winterson
Home, Mean, Night
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.170, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Fate, Addiction
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery”, p.80, Random House

Loneliness isn't about being by yourself. That's fine, right and good, desirable in many ways. Loneliness is about finding a landing-place, or not, and knowing that, whatever you do, you can go back there. The opposite of loneliness isn't company, it's return. A place to return.

Jeanette Winterson
Being Yourself, Loneliness, Opposites

Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.

Jeanette Winterson
Love Is, Temptation, Desire
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.78, Random House

Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue.

Jeanette Winterson
Mother, Art, Thinking

I believe you have to write every day–make the time. It’s about having an organized mind instead of a chaotic and untidy one. There is a myth that writers are bohemian and do what they like in their own way. Real writers are the most organized people on the planet. You have to be. You’re doing the work and running your own business as well. It’s an incredibly organized state. [Also reading]…one of the things reading does do is discipline your mind. There are no writers who are not readers.

Jeanette Winterson
Running, Real, Believe

..to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

Jeanette Winterson
Evil, Nature Of Evil, True Nature
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.141, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.

Jeanette Winterson
People, Laughing, Needs
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.141, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

It’s better to think of my life like that— part miracle, part madness. It’s better if I accept that I can’t control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; then another boat, another tide.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Miracle, Matter
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

...to live differently, to love differently, to think differently, or to try to. Is the danger of beauty so great that it is better to live without it (the standard model)? Or to fall into her arms fire to fire? There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value. Inside the horror of Nagasaki and Hiroshima lies the beauty of Einstein's E=MC squared

Jeanette Winterson
Lying, Fall, Thinking

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Two, Kind

We are all historians in our small way.

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

We are told not to privilege one story above another. All the stories must be told. Well, maybe that's true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.

Jeanette Winterson
Stories, Hearing, Privilege
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space.

Jeanette Winterson
Light, Blue, Years
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.156, Random House

It's only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I. The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told. I have to tell it myself. What is it that I have to tell myself again and again? That there is always a new beginning, a different end. I can change the story. I am the story. Begin.

Jeanette Winterson
New Beginnings, Dna, Rest Of Life

Today, the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a café. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.

Jeanette Winterson
Real, Selfish, Who I Am
Jeanette Winterson (2004). “Lighthousekeeping”, Fourth Estate (GB)

Lie beside me. Let me see the division of your pores. Let me see the web of scars made by your family's claws and you their furniture. Let me see the wounds that they denied. The battle ground of family life that has been your body. Let me see the bruised red lines that signal their encampment. Let me see the routed place where they are gone. Lie beside me and let the seeing be healing. No need to hide. No need for either darkness or light. Let me see you as you are.

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

Do you wake up as I do, having forgotten what it is that hurts or where, until you move? There is a second of consciousness that is clean again. A second that is you, without memory or experience, the animal warm and waking into a brand new world. There is the sun dissolving the dark, and light as clear as music, filling the room where you sleep and the other rooms behind your eyes.

Jeanette Winterson
Hurt, Memories, Moving

I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.

Jeanette Winterson
Running, Circles, Romance

Poets will never be the highest-paid writers in the world. Instead, poetry will go on cutting a hand-made path through the mass-market insanity. For me, anyway, that path is the one that leads to the Chapel of the Grail.

Jeanette Winterson
Cutting, Hands, Insanity

Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the letter you were writing? How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Writing, Strangers And Friends

If people aren't educated, they can't question. If they can't question, they can't change anything, which is great for the status quo and all the people who can question them at their own level.

Jeanette Winterson
People, Levels, Status Quo
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

One of the problems with watching TV is that you've got a fairly low level of language operating all the time. Quite a small vocabulary and really no conceptual or abstract thinking. That's an issue. If you've got a wide vocabulary, you can learn. The complexities of grammar, in themselves, force you to think about time in a particular way. Force you to widen your outlook on the world.

Jeanette Winterson
Thinking, Issues, Vocabulary
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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