Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.
Jeanette Wintersonunhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven.
Jeanette WintersonThat is what literature offersโa language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
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 WintersonThe future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.
Jeanette Winterson