There's no such thing as effortless beauty - you should know that. There's no effort which is not beautiful - lifting a heavy stone or loving you. Loving you is like lifting a heavy stone. It would be easier not to do it and I'm not quite sure why I am doing it. It takes all my strength and all my determination, and I said I wouldn't love someone again like this. Is there any sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance?
Jeanette WintersonThere is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isnโt. When we are objective we are subjective too. When we are neutral we are involved. When we say โI thinkโ we donโt leave our emotions outside the door. To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.
Jeanette WintersonThe trouble is that when most people are apathetic ordinary people ... have to go too far, have to ruin their lives and be made an object of scorn just to get the point across. Did they really think I'd rather be camping by a polluted river than sitting in my own flat with my things about me?
Jeanette WintersonThe 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