Jeanette Winterson

“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.”

“I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words.”

“The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story – of course that is how we all live, it’s the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It’s like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It’s like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you – and it can’t, and it shouldn’t, because something is missing.”

“I was hungry, but I was nervous too. You were so new and I didn't want to frighten you away. I didn't want to frighten myself away.”

“The stories we sit up late to hear are love stories. It seems that we cannot know enough about this riddle of our lives. We go back and back to the same scenes, the same words, trying to scrape out the meaning. Nothing could be more familiar than love. Nothing else eludes us so completely.”

“The important things. Where should I find them? In the detail, like God? In the risk, like the Devil?”

“If everything I have become were not machine-made I might be able to take the risk of being human with you.”

“I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.”

“Perhaps it is true that the world is made new again every day but our minds are not. The clamp that holds me will not let me go.”

“When I see a word held hostage to manhood I have to rescue it. Sweet trembling word, locked in a tower, tired of your Prince coming and coming.”

“I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning.”

“It is no use trying to assume again the state of innocence and acceptance of the animal or the child. This time it has to be conscious. To circle about in such gladness as his, is the effort of a whole lifetime.”

“I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me.”

“Nothing can be forgotten. Nothing can be lost. The universe itself is one vast memory system. Look back and you will find the beginnings of the world.”

“Now that I have lost you I cannot allow you to develop, you must be a photograph not a poem.”

“I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.”

“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.”

“What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning?”

“I can hold you up with one hand, but you can balance me on your fingertips.”

“When a woman gives birth her waters break and she pours out the child and the child runs free.”

“For fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed.”

“It is a true saying, that what you fear you find.”

“Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.”

“Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?”

“Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.”

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

“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.”

“I was angry. 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.”

“I can't be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I'm not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion? She says he can. Then he should.”

“Wallowing is sex for depressives.”

“Writers are not here to conform. We are here to challenge. We're not here to be comfortable—we're here, really, to shake things up. That's our job.”

“It's a symbiotic process, writing. What I am makes the books—not part of me, all of me—and then the books themselves inform the sense of what I am. So the more I can be, the better the books will be.”

“I always say to people who want to write: Live life! Don't stand on the rim, don't sit on the sidelines. Make mistakes, make a mess, get it wrong. Read everything, and get out and be in life.”

“Reading's not a luxury, art's not a luxury. It's about your soul, and it's about yourself. And if reading is a luxury, being human is a luxury”

“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.”

“[Fiction and poetry] are medicines, they're doses, and they heal the rupture that reality makes on the imagination.”

“The rebellion of art is a daily rebellion against the state of living death routinely called real life.”

“Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided likemercury then gathered up only at the last moment.”

“The world is surely wide enough to walk without fear.”

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

“When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself.”

“I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.”

“I was the place where you anchored. I was the deep water where you could be weightless. I was the surface where you saw your own reflection. You scooped me up in your hands.”

“Unmoor the boat, we could go…downriver...History is a collection of found objects washed up through time. Goods, ideas, personalities surface towards us and then sink away and some we hook out and others we ignore. And as the pattern changes so does the meaning. We cannot rely on the facts. Time that returns everything, changes everything. ..a bundle of abandoned clothes. The end of one identity and the beginning of another. …History is a madman's museum. I think I understand some of this, But it’s all subject to the tide. Unmoor the boat. Part miracle part madness. My life is a series of set sails and shipwrecks. I run aground I cut loose, the rim is dangerously near the waterline. I feel like a saint in a coracle. Head thrown back, sun on my throat. Unmoor the boat.”

“De ce sa scap? De prezent? Da, de acest prim-plan care-mi ascunde ce se intampla in perspectiva. Daca am spirit sau suflet, spuneti-i cum vreti, nu e unul singur, ci multiplu. Nu se poate multumi cu limitarea, el vrea spatiu. Poate sa locuiasca in numeroase trupuri schimbatoare, intrate in putrefactie, din viitor sau din trecut. (...) Otravita sau nu, mercurul ma face sa gandesc astfel. Daca-i dati drumul, va tremura in clone pe toata podeaua, dar il puteti aduna la loc si nu se va vedea nicio sutura, nicio urma c-ar fi fost imprastiat. Aveti o singura viata sau nenumarate vieti, depinde ce va doriti.” (pag 183)”

“Credeam ca vrea sa calatoreasca, dar imi spune adevaruri pe care le stiu deja, ca nu e nevoie sa plece de pe insula ca sa vada lumea, ca are destule mari si orase in minte. Daca e asa, daca toti le avem, atunci poate ca lumea aceasta, luna si stelele sunt si ele plasmuiri ale mintii, insa ale unei minti cu o deschidere mai larga decat a noastra. Chiar daca cineva ma gandeste, sunt liber sa fac ce vreau. Nu poate fi precum sahul universul acesta care parca s-a gandit la toate, ci mai degraba ca un teatru cu decoruri miscatoare, unde putem trece si prin pereti, daca vrem, dar nu o facem. Caci ramanem fideli propriului sentiment al dramaticului.” (pag 148)”

“Dupa cateva experimente simple, a devenit clar ca oamenii care abandonasera gravitatia fusesera, la randul lor, abandonati de ea.” (pag 143)”

“Where did love begin? What human being looked at another and saw in their face the forests and the sea? Was there a day, exhausted and weary, dragging home food, arms cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and, not knowing what you did, picked them because I love you?”

“She was a bright disc in him that left him sun-spun. She was circular, light-turned, equinox-sprung. She was season and movement, but he had never seen her cold. In winter, her fire sank from the surface to below the surface, and warmed her great halls like the legend of the king who kept the sun in his hearth.”

“There is talk in the village that there is more in these sewers than sewage. Yes, I say, Yes. But not only these sewers. There is more in your heart than can be spoken. More in your eyes than you will tell. More in the mind of you than anyone can know. More in the night than darkness. More in the river than can be dredged. [...]If I have secrets so do you.”