London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.
Jeanette WintersonWriters have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.
Jeanette WintersonWe're in a strange situation where people either don't read at all or they read a lot. There's a huge gap in between. That's something that would be good to bridge so it doesn't have to be one thing or the other. Books could be part of life in a more relaxed way. I'd like to see that.
Jeanette WintersonYouโll get over itโฆโ Itโs the clichรฉs that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You donโt get over it because โitโ is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?
Jeanette WintersonCreative work is incredibly difficult, and that is where the tests lie. Ordinary professionalism and twenty years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places. That still needs what it always needs - a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.
Jeanette Winterson