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Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Quotes

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Famous Jeanette Winterson Quotes

“Le chiesi perchè non voleva libri in casa e lei rispose: "Il guaio di un libro è che scopri cosa contiene solo quando è troppo tardi." Io pensai: "Troppo tardi per cosa?" Cominciai a leggere di nascosto [...] ogni volta che aprivo le pagine di un libro mi chiedevo se questa volta sarebbe stato troppo tardi: avrei dovuto un sorso fatale che mi avrebbe trasformato per sempre.”

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Book:Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
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“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.”

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Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“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
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“At bed-time I went into my room and put out the light. I didn't get undressed. I lay on my bed and looked out of the window at the stars. I read in a book that the stars can take you anywhere. I've never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helmets. If I were up there on the moon, or by the Milky Way, I'd want to feel the stars round my head. I'd want them in my hair the way they are in paintings of the gods. I'd want my whole body to feel the space, the empty space and points of light. That's how dancers must feel, dancers and acrobats, just for a second, that freedom.”

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Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“Great control and great discipline are necessary when you reach your own editing stage of the book, but in the early stages you have to be prepared to let anything happen and to get it wrong or go off track. The development of a character is not smooth or simple - it is as tricky as meeting someone new whom you would like to know better.”

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Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“I learned capacity for self-reflection very early, finding it through interior monologues that books are so good at and that visual media is so bad at because it's so boring - nothing's happening. In a book, you can be inside the narrator's head for 50 pages, and nothing needs to happen. Then you learn to be inside your own head without something needing to happen. It's a very good antidote to a crazy, restless, "what's next?" culture - that you can just be in your own head and nothing is happening except that this is a rich place. I love that.”

NeedsBookSelfHappensCultureNextRichCrazyMediaFindingsPagesHappeningsReflectionCapacityVery GoodBoringVisualsInteriorsRestlessAntidoteSelf ReflectionMonologuesNarratorsSo Boring
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.”

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Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.”

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Book:Written On The Body
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“And when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth. God saw it. God knows. But I am not God. And so when someone tells me what they heard or saw, I believe them, and I believe their friend who also saw, but not in the same way, and I can put these accounts together and I will not have a seamless wonder but a sandwich laced with mustard of my own.”

ThinkingKnowsWorldWayBelieveLooksI CanTwoBookTogetherI BelieveMy OwnEffortWonderTakenSawsHeardEventsAccountsBoardsImaginativeGod KnowsSandwichesHistory BooksMustardSeamless
Book:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
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“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.”

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Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“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.”

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Author:Jeanette Winterson
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