I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other. The probability of seperate worlds meeting is very small. The lure is immense. We send starships. We fall in love
Jeanette WintersonThe truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down.
Jeanette WintersonI 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 WintersonFor me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.
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