In this life you have to be your own hero. By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way. Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero whoโs usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (donโt worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) heโll find the treasure.
Jeanette WintersonI know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.
Jeanette WintersonI live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.
Jeanette WintersonShe was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings. She knew the Eiffel Tower was a hideous symbol of phallic oppression but when ordered by her commander to detonate the lift so that no-one should unthinkingly scale an erection, her mind filled with young romantics gazing over Paris and opening aerograms that said Je t'aime.
Jeanette Winterson