Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 14

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• I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Selfish, Want, Life Is

  4 Copy quote

• I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Book, Home, Rereading

  9 Copy quote

• Where did love begin?What human being looked at another and saw in their face the forests and the sea? Was there a day, exhausted and weary,dragging home food, arms cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and, not knowing what you did, picked them because I love you? In the fossil record of our existence, there is no trace of love. You cannot find it held in the earth's crust, waiting to be discovered. The long bones of our ancestors show nothing of their hearts.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Flower, Love You, Home

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.179, HMH

  8 Copy quote

• And so, from the first, we separated our pleasure. She lay on the rug and I lay at right angles to her so that only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all things pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Sweet, Kissing, Focus

  4 Copy quote

• It doesn't have to be like that but mostly it is.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.13, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before you, I replied 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 taught.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Strong, Heart, Play

  4 Copy quote

• I can't do it. I've been here before and it's not a room with a view. The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal. If I don't withdraw I have no power at all. A relationship where one person has no power or negative power, isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Views, Negative, Withdrawal

  4 Copy quote

• There's so little wonder left in the world because we've seen everything one way or another'.

  Jeanette Winterson

  World, Littles, Way

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.127, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• And if I say to you that I am glad of everything we have done together, and sorry that we will not be here together in forty years, laughing at a faded photo of you impersonating a lion, it having withered well, you less so, as we stand fabulously old, in a city that understands what spirit it takes to be old, to be beautiful, to be much looked at, to be itself, to be never quite caught, to have a past, to be content, to have seen much, to have remained, to have continued...

  Jeanette Winterson

  Beautiful, Sorry, Past

  4 Copy quote

• I think of love as a force of nature-as strog as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming,as drought-making as it is life-giving.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Thinking, Giving, Sun

  Jeanette Winterson (2004). “Lighthousekeeping”, Fourth Estate (GB)

  6 Copy quote

• I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

  Jeanette Winterson

  People, Devil, Monsters

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.105, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• He: What’s the matter with you? Me: Nothing. Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, "but there was nothing the matter with her.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Forever, Soul, Matter

  4 Copy quote

• I was the place where you anchored. I was the deep water where you could be weightless. I was the surface where you saw your own reflection. You scooped me up in your hands.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reflection, Hands, Deep Water

  6 Copy quote

• And you? Now that I have discovered you? Beautiful, dangerous, unleashed. Still I try to hold you, knowing that your body is faced with knives.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Beautiful, Knives, Knowing

  4 Copy quote

• This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love Is, Stories, Way

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.142, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• What I wanted to do was to fasten my index finger and thumb at the bolts of your collar bone, push out, spread the web of my hand until it caught against your throat. You asked me if I wanted to strangle you. No, I wanted to fit you, not just in the obvious ways but in so many indentations.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Hands, Thumbs, Way

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• The ancients believed in fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Strong, Lying, Fate

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

  4 Copy quote

• To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Running, Discovery

  Jeanette Winterson (2017). “Love: Vintage Minis”, p.52, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Now that I have lost you I cannot allow you to develop, you must be a photograph not a poem.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Photograph, Lost, Lost You

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.119, Random House

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• What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Feels

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.51, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Explore me' you said and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Wall, Home, Thinking

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.120, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• If you think about something for long enough,' she explained, `more than likely, that thing will happen.' She tapped her head. `It's all in the mind.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Thinking, Long, Mind

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.30, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Life, Two, Secret

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.115, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Real, Apples, Way

  55 Copy quote

• In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Hands, Sun, Heat

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.51, Random House

  7 Copy quote

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