Authors:

Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 9

All Quotes Art Birth Boundaries Change Character Children Choices Community Creativity Culture Death Desire Discipline Effort Falling In Love Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Giving Giving Up God Grief Growing Up Happy Endings Hate Healing Heart Home House Hurt Identity Imagination Inspirational Journey Language Leaving Life Literature Loss Love Lying Madness Memories Metaphor Morning New Beginnings Pain Passion Past Purpose Reading Reality Reflection Regret Revenge Risk Running Silence Soul Temptation Time Today Tragedy Values Waiting Wall War Water Winning Worship Writing
Life was a pre-death experience.

Life was a pre-death experience.

Jeanette Winterson

I dream of flight, not to be as the angels are, but to rise above the smallness of it all. The smallnesss that I am. Against the daily death the iconography of wings.

Jeanette Winterson
Dream, Angel, Wings

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

Jeanette Winterson
Live Life, Safe, Helping
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.63, Random House

I felt like a thief with a bagful of stolen glances.

Jeanette Winterson
Thieves, Stolen, Glances
Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.49, Random House

She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it.

Jeanette Winterson
Guarantees, Boat, Conviction
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.159, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

When we say we can pull resources away from libraries, from culture, from those parts of the education system that are not about utility, what we are really saying is that the life of the mind is unnecessary.

Jeanette Winterson
Mind, Library, Culture
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.

Jeanette Winterson
War, Courage To Love, Ifs

It's true that heroes are inspiring, but mustn't they also do some rescuing if they are to be worthy of their name? Would Wonder Woman matter if she only sent commiserating telegrams to the distressed?

Jeanette Winterson
Inspirational, Hero, Names

Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.

Jeanette Winterson
Lying, Reality, Past

What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Sex, Real
"The Powerbook". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 2000.

The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself. When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. Its a reference point, not an end in itself, even though you seem to be following it. So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself. The end of all your exploring will be to cease from exploration and know the place for the first time.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Time, Stars

Six books… my mother didn’t want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books – that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.

Jeanette Winterson
Mother, Book, Fall
Jeanette Winterson (2011). “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?”, p.36, Random House

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

Jeanette Winterson
Real, Believe, Writing
Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Weight”, Canongate Books

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Literature, Connected

We don't go to Shakespeare to find out about life in Elizabethan England; we go to Shakespeare to find out about ourselves now.

Jeanette Winterson
England, Elizabethan
"The secret life of us" by Jeanette Winterson, www.theguardian.com. November 25, 2002.

You're never alone with a book, are you? It's a dialogue.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Dialogue
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it?

Jeanette Winterson
Love Is, Games, Play

Great control and great discipline are necessary when you reach your own editing stage of the book, but in the early stages you have to be prepared to let anything happen and to get it wrong or go off track. The development of a character is not smooth or simple - it is as tricky as meeting someone new whom you would like to know better.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Character, Simple

If you don't educate people well, then you're going to have a lot of violent, angry young men and women. You can go around saying they're all so violent, just throw them in jail, this is an underclass, what can you do? You can create fear. The issue of violence is very suitable for a repressive society. Then you can have more legislation, more police, more laws to fight crime, when all you need to do is to encourage people in a different way.

Jeanette Winterson
Fighting, Men, Jail
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

The crazy thing is that when we go to somebody's house, what's better than looking at their bookshelves? Nobody's ever going to say, "Can I see the index to your Kindle?" It's so depressing and so unsexy. Sure, it's there, but nobody is going to get excited by that.

Jeanette Winterson
Depressing, Crazy, House
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

I learned capacity for self-reflection very early, finding it through interior monologues that books are so good at and that visual media is so bad at because it's so boring - nothing's happening. In a book, you can be inside the narrator's head for 50 pages, and nothing needs to happen. Then you learn to be inside your own head without something needing to happen. It's a very good antidote to a crazy, restless, "what's next?" culture - that you can just be in your own head and nothing is happening except that this is a rich place. I love that.

Jeanette Winterson
Crazy, Book, Reflection
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

Some people are happy when they are at the sea; I'm happy when I'm standing in front of a shelf of books. It feels like the known place and also the beginning of a new adventure. It has that simultaneous paradoxical effect of making me feel absolutely calm and very excited.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Adventure, Sea
Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.

Jeanette Winterson
Dream, Past, Forget
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.62, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

The Bible writers didn't care that they were bunching together sequences some of which were historical, some preposterous, and some downright manipulative. Faithful recording was not their business; faith was.

Jeanette Winterson
Bible, Faith, Historical

I have met a great many people on their way towards God and I wonder why they have chosen to look for him rather than themselves.

Jeanette Winterson
God, People, Way
1989 Sexing the Cherry.

You May Also Like: