Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 6

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• I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Dream, Imagination, Desire

  10 Copy quote

• I like the way the morning can be stormy and the afternoon clear and sparkly as a jewel in the water. Put your hand in the water to reach for a sea urchin or a sea shell, and the thing desired never quite lies where you had lined it up to be. The same is true of love. In prospect or contemplation, love is where it seems to be. Reach in to lift it out and your hand misses

  Jeanette Winterson

  Morning, Lying, Love Is

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• live in the space between chaos and shape. I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning. At other times the line is so wired that it lights up the soles of my feet, gradually my whole body, until I am my own beacon, and I see then the beauty of newly created worlds, a form that is not random. A new beginning.

  Jeanette Winterson

  New Beginnings, Dark, Feet

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• Whatever is powerful to you can be translated into something which will matter to somebody that you will never know.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Powerful, Literature, Matter

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• Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reading, Book, Eye

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.89, Random House

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• 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.

  7 Copy quote

• Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Heart, Islands, Matter

  6 Copy quote

• Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Fall, Clouds

  6 Copy quote

• I keep telling this story - different people, different places, different times - but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tight rope between two worlds.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Two, People, Different

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Powerbook”, p.119, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• What's invisible to us is also crucial for our own well-being.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Literature, Invisible, Well Being

  6 Copy quote

• Although wherever you are going is always in front of you, there is no such thing as straight ahead.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Wherever You Are, Fronts

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.49, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

  Jeanette Winterson

  God, Mother, Buddhist

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• Pain is very often a maimed creature without a mouth.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Pain, Mouths, Creatures

  "Shafts of sunlight". www.theguardian.com. November 15, 2008.

  6 Copy quote

• There's no such thing as autobiography, there's only art and lies

  Jeanette Winterson

  Art, Lying, Autobiography

  Jeanette Winterson (1995). “Art & Lies : a Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd”, Vintage Canada

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• To me, life, for all its privations, is a luminous thing. You have to risk it.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Risk, Luminous, Risk It

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• The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Dark, Narrative

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

• Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wished consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Cat, Heart, Dry Up

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.66, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

• Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Voice, Listening, Needs

  8 Copy quote

• The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Journey, Wrinkles, Calendars

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.87, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Games, Ties, History

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• I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Believe, Book, Long

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• Somewhere between fear and sex passion is.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Sex, Passion

  Jeanette Winterson (2011). “The Passion”, p.62, Random House

  9 Copy quote

• You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden these words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Mirrors, Blood

  5 Copy quote

• She was fragile, gentle, wide awake in a sleeping world.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Sleep, World, Wide Awake

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• It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Space, Breathing, Wish

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.141, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

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