Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Quotes about:

• I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Cutting, Pieces

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  46 Copy quote

• In a world where meaning is often absent or imposed, reading offers a dialogue with ourselves, with society, with history, and with the dead.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reading, World, Dialogue

  8 Copy quote

• Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Art, Thinking, Differences

  66 Copy quote

• You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love, Pain, Pregnancy

  59 Copy quote

• While I can’t have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I’d take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I’d wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love, Dream, Morning

  25 Copy quote

• It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Want, What You Want

  18 Copy quote

• I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Years, Leaving, Another Chance

  "Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 2011.

  22 Copy quote

• It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Second Chance, Remember, Moments

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.19, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  17 Copy quote

• Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Glasses, Expression, Break Out

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.9, Random House

  60 Copy quote

• But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Dark, Light, Needs

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.172, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  13 Copy quote

• To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Inspirational, World, Breakdown

  24 Copy quote

• In this life you have to be your own hero. By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way. Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero who’s usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don’t worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) he’ll find the treasure.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Clever, Stupid, Hero

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Powerbook”, p.155, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• The key to happiness ... is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Keys, Tolerance, Key To Happiness

  5 Copy quote

• As people get older they have these rigid patterns that they impose on themselves, and it kills them. They become dull, they become dead to new experience, they become afraid, biased, and bigoted. It's really simply to do with refusing new experience.

  Jeanette Winterson

  New Experiences, People, Dull

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

  10 Copy quote

• There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Discovery, Risk, Values

  11 Copy quote

• Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Book, Home, Doors

  35 Copy quote

• I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Believe, Book, Communication

  9 Copy quote

• For me, language is a freedom. As soon as you have found the words with which to express something, you are no longer incoherent, you are no longer trapped by your own emotions, by your own experiences; you can describe them, you can tell them, you can bring them out of yourself and give them to somebody else. That is an enormously liberating experience.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Giving, Emotion, Language

  6 Copy quote

• Cheating is easy. There's no swank to infidelity. To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that taking but when you open them there's nothing there.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Cheating, Hands, Infidelity

  17 Copy quote

• I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Important Choices, Theory, Left Behind

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.169, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  27 Copy quote

• Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

  Jeanette Winterson

  People, Misery, Miserable

  53 Copy quote

• Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Dog, Falling In Love, Book

  44 Copy quote

• I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Powerful, Stupid, School

  15 Copy quote

• I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean? It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love, Future, Mean

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

  41 Copy quote

• I know our feelings can be so unbearable that we employ ingenious strategies – unconscious strategies – to keep those feelings away. We do a feelings-swap, where we avoid feeling sad or lonely or afraid or inadequate, and feel angry instead. It can work the other way, too – sometimes you do need to feel angry, not inadequate; sometimes you do need to feel love and acceptance, and not the tragic drama of your life. It takes courage to feel the feeling – and not trade it on the feelings-exchange, or even transfer it altogether to another person.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lonely, Drama, Acceptance

  33 Copy quote

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