Do all lovers feel helpless and valiant in the presence of the beloved? Helpless because the need to roll over like a pet dog is never far away. Valiant because you know you would slay a dragon with a pocket knife if you had to.
Jeanette WintersonThe baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story โ of course that is how we all live, itโs the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. Itโs like reading a book with the first few pages missing. Itโs like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you โ and it canโt, and it shouldnโt, because something is missing.
Jeanette Wintersonyour 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 WintersonI like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.
Jeanette WintersonI believe you have to write every dayโmake the time. Itโs about having an organized mind instead of a chaotic and untidy one. There is a myth that writers are bohemian and do what they like in their own way. Real writers are the most organized people on the planet. You have to be. Youโre doing the work and running your own business as well. Itโs an incredibly organized state. [Also reading]โฆone of the things reading does do is discipline your mind. There are no writers who are not readers.
Jeanette Winterson