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Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 5

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If the sun is shining, stand in it- yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass- they have to- because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred.

If the sun is shining, stand in it- yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass- they have to- because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred. What you are pursuing is meaning- a meaningful life... There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.

Jeanette Winterson
Meaningful, Pursuit Of Happiness, Happy Times

I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.

Jeanette Winterson
Fate, Destiny, Choices
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.186, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do now know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I’ll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Oil, Needs

What you risk reveals what you value.

Jeanette Winterson
Risk, Literature, Take A Chance
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.43, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Sometimes we forget that if we do not encourage new work now, we will lose all touch with the work of the past we claim to love. If art is not living in a continuous present, it is living in a museum, only those working now can complete the circuit between the past, present and future energies we call art.

Jeanette Winterson
Art, Past, Museums

I am not tempted by God but I love his trappings.

Jeanette Winterson
Tempted

reading is not a passive act. It's a creative act. It's a relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet. I think it's very wrong to write in a way that leaves no room for the reader to maneuver. I don't want to get in the way. What I'd really like to do is to perform the Indian Rope Trick - go higher and higher and eventually disappear.

Jeanette Winterson
Reading, Writing, Thinking

Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear...Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.

Jeanette Winterson
Growing Up, Our World, Expansion

Don't regret your life, child, it will pass soon enough.

Jeanette Winterson
Children, Regret, Soon Enough
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Freud, one of the grand masters of narrative, knew that the past is not fixed in the way that linear time suggests. We can return. We can pick up what we dropped. We can mend what others broke. We can talk with the dead.

Jeanette Winterson
Past, Narrative, Way
"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson (Page 58), www.huffingtonpost.com. 2011.

Yes, we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check their diary when we arrange to meet.

Jeanette Winterson
Friendship, Smart, Reading

Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don't give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Valentines Day, Giving Up

I feel in colour, strong tones that I hue down for the comfort of the pastelly inclined. Beige and magnolia and a hint of pink are what the well-decorated heart is wearing; who wants my blood red and vein-blue?

Jeanette Winterson
Strong, Heart, Blue

When a woman gives birth her waters break and she pours out the child and the child runs free.

Jeanette Winterson
Funny, Uplifting, Running
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.4, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

I return to problems i can't solve, not because i am an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see. Always a new beginning, a different end.

Jeanette Winterson
Real, New Beginnings, Different
Jeanette Winterson (2010). “Weight”, p.137, Canongate Books

They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

Jeanette Winterson
Different, Goes On, Literature

In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Journey, Emotional

Writing objects to the lie that life is small. Writing is a cell of energy. Writing defines itself. Writing draws its viewer in for longer than an instant. Writing exhibits boldness. Writing restores power to exalt, unnerve, shock, and transform us. Writing does not imitate life, it anticipates life.

Jeanette Winterson
Lying, Writing, Cells

Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

Jeanette Winterson
Silence
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.144, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. I never shied away from love's hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love.

Jeanette Winterson
Love Is, Ideas, Rising

More than sex. More than money. You know, life is not endless is it? Cash, cars, cocaine, and girls. It's more than that. And there is a spiritual dimension to people...we are driven to want something more.

Jeanette Winterson
Girl, Spiritual, Sex

The truth is that you can divide your heart in all sorts of interesting ways - a little here, a little there, most banked at home, some of it coined out for a flutter. But love cleaves through the mind's mathematics. Love's lengthways splits the heart in two - the heart where you are, the heart where you want to be. How will you heal your heart when love has split it in two?

Jeanette Winterson
Home, Heart, Two

Reading is where the wild things are.

Jeanette Winterson
Reading, Wild Things

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

Jeanette Winterson
Emotional

Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision.

Jeanette Winterson
Lying, Night, Long
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.7, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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