I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn't lost.
Jeanette WintersonThe continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.
Jeanette WintersonWoolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
Jeanette WintersonWhen we say we can pull resources away from libraries, from culture, from those parts of the education system that are not about utility, what we are really saying is that the life of the mind is unnecessary.
Jeanette Winterson