Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsLiteratureThinkingWorldWayPeopleLoveBookKnowsWant

Famous Jeanette Winterson Quotes

“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.”

PeopleBelieveWellsChildrenLongHardShowsHandsFacesLyingNightGrowsKnownVisionDarknessGrowing UpPathWillingHard WorkTomorrowAngelHotOur ChildrenWoodsIntimacyAwakeTouchedWell KnownJarsLukewarmAwake At Night
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry. She wanted to be a nun. She hoped I would be a priest and saved to give me an education while my friends plaited rope and trailed after the plough. 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.”

GivingShouldHeartSaidStillsI CanWould BeWantedMotherPassionVoiceTaughtMy HeartMy FriendsGive MeSavedLoudPriestsNot InterestedVirginsRopeRiotNunSmall Voice
Book:The Passion
Create image

“Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wished consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.”

HeartLittlesHas BeensMatterBodyFacesKnownToo MuchLoversDrinkConversationMouthsCatDressesPaintDinnerStoresDrySweatFlagsStrokesThreateningPalmsHeart AttackNervousnessDry Up
Book:The Passion
Create image

“Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.”

HumansLongArtTwoTogetherPastLanguageInterestHuman BeingsAnimalCitiesPossibilityThirdsRemainsInvisibleDramaticTwo ThingsLoftyPretensionTimes PastConniving
Book:Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd
Create image

“Yes, we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check their diary when we arrange to meet.”

ThinkingWantMindReadingFoundEasyFriendshipLosesSpaceHalfMissingFrontsSeriousPaperSmartMy FriendsChecksBotherMy Best FriendDiariesWashingThink Of YouMy FriendshipYour Best FriendAbout FriendshipNew FriendsFriendship MemoriesOne Line FriendshipChatterBest FriendshipInconsequentialBeside YouNew FriendshipBeing A Good FriendWho Your Friends AreFound Someone
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“Thinking about time is to acknowledge two contradictory certainties: that our outward lives are governed by the seasons and the clock; that our inward lives are governed by something much less regular-an imaginative impulse cutting through the dictates of daily time, and leaving us free to ignore the boundaries of here and now and pass like lightning along the coil of pure time, that is, the circle of the universe and whatever it does or does not contain.”

ThinkingDoeTwoUniverseCuttingPureSeasonsLeavingCirclesBoundariesCertaintyImpulseClockAcknowledgeLightningInwardImaginativeContradictoryHere And Now
Book:Sexing the Cherry
Create image

“Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.”

WorldRealityPastRememberLyingUniverseDifferencesLinesHappenedPropositionsFiniteStraight Lines
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”

ReasonDesireOrderGivenSpaceLove IsViolenceOne ThingQuietStrongerDrawingTemptationBeing TrueDeafPleadingQuiet Space
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.”

PeopleBelieveKindEndsHardStoriesCertainFoundBitsCan DoImpossibleCatDon't BelieveComplicatedAdmireAll KindsStringsCradleKnotsFathomTrue Things
Book:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Create image

“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.”

I CanDifferentEndsStoriesCertainCrimeCreationStrangeHorrorShapesLove StoryAgain And AgainDnaNew BeginningsAlphabetRest Of LifeCreation StoriesStrange Stories
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image