Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsLiteratureThinkingWorldWayPeopleLoveBookKnowsWant

Famous Jeanette Winterson Quotes

“Quello che cerchi è il significato: una vita che abbia un signficato. C'è l'hap, il fato, la giocata che è tua e non è prefissata, ma cambiare il corso del fiume, o dare nuove carte, qualunque sia la metafora che prefirisci usare, richiederà un sacco di energie. Ci saranno volte in cui andrà così male che sopravviverai a malapena e volte in cui capirai che sopravvivere a malapena secondo i tuoi parametri è molto meglio che vivere una pomposa vita a metà secondo i parametri degli altri.”

VitaDestinoFatoSopravvivere
Book:Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Create image

“Fictions are not make-believe. We have come to understand this better through the medium of sci-fi, as so much of what begins as a futuristic fantasy becomes an ordinary part of the world we know. Fiction is much more than social-realist cut-outs of contemporary life. More than representation. Fiction declares and debates inner realities that gradually press forward into our outer circumstances. We catch up with our dreams.”

WritingFictionDreamsScience FictionInner Realities
Book:One Aladdin Two Lamps
Create image

“Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that. She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window. She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies. Enemies were: The Devil (in his many forms) Next Door Sex (in its many forms) Slugs Friends were: God Our dog Auntie Madge The Novels of Charlotte Bronte Slug pellets and me, at first.”

LoveChildrenHateParentsMothersDaughtersMother Daughter Relationships
Book:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Create image

“There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat.”

LightFoundLostSavedStory
Book:Lighthousekeeping
Create image

“For those whose life together is not one shiny, sunny thing, and often a mixed blessing, Mercury is the natural ruler. We were not easy, you and I. You were trouble and I am difficult. You were faithless and I am fixed. You said you had struck gold when you met me--but you loved bonds that could be broken--gold dissolves in mercury just as salt dissolves in water--but, in reality, nothing is lost. Death, though, is a different reality. You are dissolved. Into what? Into time, into space, into the leaky container that is me, who will also dissolve into time, into space. No. 80 on the Periodic Table, you are gone. But before I take up my role as the long-suffering one--the gold-band-wearing survivor who was always there and is still--I am aware that mercury makes possible the extraction of gold from poorer-quality ores. You brought out the best in me.”

DeathRelationshipsChallengesLossGriefMarriageMourningProblems
Book:Night Side of the River
Create image

“Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never wilfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort.”

WayWantShouldKindPersonsArtBookSometimesJobsReadingAsksLiteratureEasyCan DoChallengesSimpleEffortTvsDirectWhat You WantAll KindsPassiveObscureInteractive
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out. Even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed.”

IfsWorldHas BeensArtMomentsMightSongEnergyLanguagePovertyMinesArt IsRaisesTyrannyNakedDestroyedRhythmDustStaffStrokesBrushesMudStolenShieldsArtifactsBrush Strokes
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me. He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me.”

WantHomeEyeWantedTogetherFantasyHeardHusbandSingingJokesGardenOppositesAffairDinnerEnjoyedSatHis EyesMy HusbandLaughedPoliteAdulteryCourteous
Book:Sexing the Cherry
Create image

“It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book -- which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little -- and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsFirstsLittlesStillsBookDifficultHurtSuccessfulObjectsProtectSacredHillsBeing SuccessfulPocketsThreateningSave MeTalismansI Was Hurt
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image

“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.”

IfsWorldLoveHeartMayRealPassionSexLove IsTalkingStrangeTruth IsBuiltCleanSizeAffectionIceConvenienceTabooReal ThingsImmensityStrange World
Author:Jeanette Winterson
Create image