Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Why is the measure of love loss?

…I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt.

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.

One of the problems with watching TV is that you've got a fairly low level of language operating all the time. Quite a small vocabulary and really no conceptual or abstract thinking. That's an issue. If you've got a wide vocabulary, you can learn. The complexities of grammar, in themselves, force you to think about time in a particular way. Force you to widen your outlook on the world.

With animal behavior, they're all fine until you introduce some rogue element into the cage, and then they go crazy.

You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.

I've never been tempted by God but I like his trappings.

I like the way the morning can be stormy and the afternoon clear and sparkly as a jewel in the water. Put your hand in the water to reach for a sea urchin or a sea shell, and the thing desired never quite lies where you had lined it up to be. The same is true of love. In prospect or contemplation, love is where it seems to be. Reach in to lift it out and your hand misses

Today, the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a café. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.

While I can’t have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I’d take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I’d wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.

There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain.

If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.

This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it's getting late. I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.

We're a lukewarm people for all our feast days and hard work. Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision. Our children frighten us in their intimacy, but we make sure they grow up like us. Lukewarm like us. On a night like this, hands and faces hot, we can believe that tomorrow will show us angels in jars and that the well-known woods will suddenly reveal another path.

Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.

She had made him possible. In that sense she was his god. Like God, she was neglected.

The fact is that every atom that we're made of is part of that first explosion of a nuclear star billions of years ago. We're connected to the entire universe.

Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.

But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.

Why did I walk so purposefully in a straight line? Where would it take me? He went round and round and we got there all the same.

I have no idea what happens next.

Destiny is a worrying concept. I don't want to be fated, I want to choose.

I’m not club-able, you see. I don’t like literary parties and literary gatherings and literary identities. I’d hate to join anything, however loosely.

I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.

When people looked at him they had the feeling of being shut out. He did not shut them out. He shut himself in.

I am getting much more political as I get older. It's the duty of any writer, in particular, not to stand back from the world.