One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but thats quite hard to say casually, at the beginning of a relationship. Itโs not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, and then being on somebody elseโs.
Jeanette WintersonYou cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return.
Jeanette WintersonWith animal behavior, they're all fine until you introduce some rogue element into the cage, and then they go crazy.
Jeanette WintersonI know our feelings can be so unbearable that we employ ingenious strategies โ unconscious strategies โ 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 โ 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 โ and not trade it on the feelings-exchange, or even transfer it altogether to another person.
Jeanette WintersonSome people are happy when they are at the sea; I'm happy when I'm standing in front of a shelf of books. It feels like the known place and also the beginning of a new adventure. It has that simultaneous paradoxical effect of making me feel absolutely calm and very excited.
Jeanette WintersonI am getting much more political as I get older. It's the duty of any writer, in particular, not to stand back from the world.
Jeanette WintersonThis is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it's getting late. I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.
Jeanette Winterson