Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• When I was born I became the visible corner of a folded map. The map has more than one route. More than one destination. The map that is the unfolding self is not exactly leading anywhere. The arrow that says YOU ARE HERE is your first coordinate. There is a lot that you can't change when you are a kid. But you can pack for the journey.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Kids, Journey, Self

  6 Copy quote

• I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Thinking, Literature, Private Life

  "Redemption songs". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

• Tell me the story, Pew. . . . It was a woman. You always say that. There's always a woman somewhere, child; a princess, a witch, a stepmother, a mermaid, a fairy godmother, or one as wicked as she is beautiful, or as beautiful as she is good. Is that the complete list? Then there is the woman you love. Who's she? That's another story.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Children

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.82, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  15 Copy quote

• When my friend Melot set the trap, I think I knew it. I turned to death full face, as I had turned to love with my whole body. I would let death enter me as you had entered me. You had crept along my blood vessels through the wound, and the blood that circulates returns to the heart. You circulated me, you made me blush like a girl in the hoop of your hands. You were in my arteries and my lymph, you were the colour just under my skin, and if I cut myself, it was you I bled. Red Isolde, alive on my fingers, and always the force of blood pushing you back to my heart.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Girl, Heart, Cutting

  4 Copy quote

• Like all familiar objects, it had become invisible.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Invisible, Familiar, Objects

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Powerbook”, p.196, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• What I want does exist if I dare to find it.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Doe, Want, Dare

  5 Copy quote

• I think men can really get in the way when you are trying to sort your life out and get on with it. Because they just take up so much space. I'm not under any illusions that I could have been where I am now in literary terms if I had been heterosexual. I really believe I would not be.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Believe, Thinking, Men

  5 Copy quote

• Life was a pre-death experience.

  Jeanette Winterson

  6 Copy quote

• She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Guarantees, Boat, Conviction

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.159, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

• We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much. And still we long to feel.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Laughter, Fear, Passion

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “The Passion”, p.155, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

• He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil. Psychosis: out of touch with reality. Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reality, Psychosis, Trying

  14 Copy quote

• You were in my arms for the first time, and you said my name, 'Tristan.' I answered you: 'Isolde.' Isolde. The world became a word.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Names, World, Arms

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.189, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Falling In Love, Firsts, Logical

  Jeanette Winterson (2011). “The Passion”, p.145, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• In the presence of love, hearth and quest become one.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Quests, Presence Of Love

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.81, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Pain, Heart, Reality

  Jeanette Winterson (1985). “Oranges are Not the Only Fruit”

  4 Copy quote

• He doubted her. You must never doubt the one you love. But they might not be telling the truth. Never mind that. You tell them the truth. What do you mean? You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own. So what should I say? When? When I love someone? You should say it.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Children, Honesty, Mean

  Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Taken, Journey, Lines

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Sexing the Cherry”, p.2, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart before I met you, I relied upon it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Strong, Block, Writing

  "Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

  4 Copy quote

• What is it that you contain? The Dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia. The expanding universe opening in your gut. Are your twenty-three feet of intestines loaded with stars?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Stars, Expanding Universe, Light

  4 Copy quote

• Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall. As you lay on your back paddling in space you might notice your feet had fled your head. You are stretching slowly slowly, getting longer, your joints are slipping away from their usual places. There is no connection between your shoulder and your arm. You will break up bone by bone, fractured from who you are, drifting away now, the centre cannot hold.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Fall, Law, Two

  4 Copy quote

• I am much better at saying how I feel when I no longer feel it.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Feels

  4 Copy quote

• It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Husband, Artist, Helpful

  "Redemption songs" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2004.

  10 Copy quote

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

  Jeanette Winterson

  God, Tempted

  7 Copy quote

• Myths hook and bind the mind because at the same time they set the mind free: they explain the universe while allowing the universe to go on being unexplained; and we seem to need this even now, in our twentieth-century grandeur.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Mind, Needs, Hook

  4 Copy quote

• When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed - for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little. Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Home, Night

  5 Copy quote

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