When pieces of work speak to us in a way that feels as if they were made just for us, those become our private worlds that we return to.
Jeanette WintersonTo kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.
Jeanette WintersonReading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
Jeanette WintersonIn the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.
Jeanette WintersonI dreamed I was a single moment in a single day. A note struck and vanished. A sounding. A reckoning. Gone.
Jeanette WintersonWhy should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort.
Jeanette Winterson