Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.
Jeanette WintersonWhile I canโt have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. Iโd take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. Iโd wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say โWill youโฆโ my answer is โYesโ, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.
Jeanette WintersonIn the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun. This place will warm me, feed me and care for me. I will hold on to this pulse against other rhythms. The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm.
Jeanette WintersonIn a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.
Jeanette WintersonNow that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself. I know that the earth is not flat but my feet are. I know that space is curved but my brain has been condoned by habit to grow in a straight line. What I call light is my own blend of darkness. What I call a view is my hand-painted trompe-l'oeil. I run after knowledge like a ferret down a ferret hole. My limitations, I call the boundaries of what can be known. I interpret the world by confusing other people's psychology with my own.
Jeanette Winterson