Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Jeanette Winterson

  Want, What You Want

  18 Copy quote

• In a world where meaning is often absent or imposed, reading offers a dialogue with ourselves, with society, with history, and with the dead.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reading, World, Dialogue

  7 Copy quote

• I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Believe, Book, Communication

  9 Copy quote

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

  Jeanette Winterson

  Dark, Light, Needs

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.172, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  13 Copy quote

• 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 who’s usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don’t 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) he’ll find the treasure.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Clever, Stupid, Hero

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Powerbook”, p.155, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Art, Thinking, Differences

  66 Copy quote

• I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Cutting, Pieces

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  46 Copy quote

• The key to happiness ... is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Keys, Tolerance, Key To Happiness

  5 Copy quote

• You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love, Pain, Pregnancy

  58 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love, Dream, Morning

  25 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Glasses, Expression, Break Out

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.9, Random House

  60 Copy quote

• It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Second Chance, Remember, Moments

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.19, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  17 Copy quote

• In this life, you have to be your own hero.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Hero, This Life

  2000 The. Power Book.

  6 Copy quote

• To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Inspirational, World, Breakdown

  24 Copy quote

• Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and a different kind of space.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Book, Home, Doors

  35 Copy quote

• Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun. When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in bewilderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me. And when I had looked at myself and grown accustomed to who I was, I was not afraid to hate parts of me because I wanted to be worthy of the mirror bearer.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Life, Hate, Passion

  6 Copy quote

• I 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 Winterson

  Years, Leaving, Another Chance

  "Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 2011.

  22 Copy quote

• I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love, Powerful, Thinking

  17 Copy quote

• I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Important Choices, Theory, Left Behind

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.169, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  27 Copy quote

• Do it from the heart or not at all.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Inspirational, Life, Heart

  "Real shopping" by Jeanette Winterson, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2007.

  15 Copy quote

• I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Powerful, Stupid, School

  15 Copy quote

• I don't want to conquer you; I just want to climb you.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Want, Conquer, Climbs

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Powerbook”, p.174, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Ordinary, Shapes, Accepting

  6 Copy quote

• You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them but now I am alone on a rock hewn out of my own body.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love You, Rocks, Long

  9 Copy quote

• unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Family, Silence, Unhappy

  "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

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