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Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Jeanette Winterson quotes about life

British Novelist August 27, 1959

Jeanette Winterson quotes in french
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Quotes

What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The 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. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable. Jeanette Winterson
What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsibile, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. And I think it means love. Jeanette Winterson
Breathe in, breath out. Oxygen is carcinogenic and likely puts a limit on our life span. It would be unwise though, to try to extend life by not breathing at all. Which of us doesn't do it? Either we loll in anaerobic stupor, too afraid to fill our lungs with risky beauty, or we roll out fire like dragons, destroying the world we love. I try not to burn up my world with rage. It is so hard. Jeanette Winterson
It's only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I. The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told. I have to tell it myself. What is it that I have to tell myself again and again? That there is always a new beginning, a different end. I can change the story. I am the story. Begin. Jeanette Winterson
You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.'I've hidden these words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which? Jeanette Winterson
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 caf. 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. ... Jeanette Winterson
Don't you think it's strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin-sized world? A head on one side, a story on the other. Someone you loved and what happened. That's all there is when you dig in your pockets. The most significant thing is someone else's face. What else is embossed on your hands but her? Jeanette Winterson
Misery is a vacuum. A space without air, a suffocated dead place, the abode of the miserable. Misery is a tenement block, rooms like battery cages, sit over your own droppings, lie on your own filth. Misery is a no U-turns, no stopping road. Travel down it pushed by those behind, tripped by those in front. Travel it at furious speed though the days are mummified in lead. It happens so fast once you get started, there's no anchor from the real world to slow you down, nothing to hold on to.... Jeanette Winterson
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become. Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson quote: "Don't regret your life, child, it will pass soon enough."
Don't regret your life, child, it will pass soon enough. Jeanette Winterson
The pursuit of happiness is more elusive, it is life long and not goal-centered. Whant you are pusuing is meaning - a meaningful life. The fate the draw that is yours and it isn't fixed, but changing the course of the stream thats going to take a lot of energy. There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when your realize that being barely alive , on your own terms, is better then living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms. The pursuit isn't all... Jeanette Winterson
I walked out to brood on this life of ours, which seems from birth to death to be a steady loss, disguised by sudden gains and happiness, which persuade us of good fortune, when all the while the glass is emptying. Jeanette Winterson
Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the saem as being happy - which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine. If the sun is shining, stand in it - yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass - they have to - because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred. What you are pursuing is meaning - a meaningful life. Jeanette Winterson
I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is. Jeanette Winterson
Life…we understand it differently at different stages. It’s what is interesting about getting older, you realize your relationship with the past is always negotiable. There is a lot of freedom in that, because you realize you can go back to what you did such a long time ago. You can talk with the dead, talk with your lost self, your disappeared self, and you can visit those places again, and understand it differently. That makes a huge difference. Jeanette Winterson

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