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Jeanette Winterson Quotes about Writing

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I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

Jeanette Winterson
Love, Writing, Happens
"Redemption songs" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

Jeanette Winterson
Inspirational, Writing, Listening

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

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Two, Kind

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

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

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

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

Writing is both bomb and bomb disposal-a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing.

Jeanette Winterson
Powerful, Writing, Soul
"Creative writing professor Hanif Kureishi says such courses are 'a waste of time'" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. March 4, 2014.

I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Goes On
Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.159, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before I met you, I relied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut.

Jeanette Winterson
Strong, Block, Writing
"Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

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

Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Discipline, Creative
"Ten rules for writing fiction (part two)" by Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.

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

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Literature, Fables
"Redemption songs". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Self, Literature
"Redemption songs" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

I fell into the books, and left myself there for safekeeping.

Jeanette Winterson
Book, Writing, Left

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

Jeanette Winterson
Change, Writing, Groups

I think writing is a process that starts long before the writers are actually writers and probably goes on long afterward. It's rather like the way the Arabs weave rugs. They don't stop. They just cut them off at a certain spot on the loom. There is no particular beginning or end.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Cutting, Thinking

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

Jeanette Winterson
Sex, Writing, Important

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.

I think of myself in a continuum as a woman. Two hundred years ago, it would have been very difficult for me to write at all.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Thinking, Years
Source: www.newstatesman.com

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Self, Arrogant
Source: www.newstatesman.com

The Anglo-American tradition is much more linear than the European tradition. If you think about writers like Borges, Calvino, Perec or Marquez, they're not bound in the same sort of way. They don't come out of the classic 19th-century novel, which is where all the problems start. 19th-century novels are fabulous and we should all read them, but we shouldn't write them.

Jeanette Winterson
Writing, Thinking, Way
Source: www.raintaxi.com

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