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Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Quotes

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Famous Jeanette Winterson Quotes

“Isn't content also context? I ask him. Your experiences, your circumstances, the time you live in? Consciousness isn't free-floating; it's enmeshed. That is true, he says, but you know, I believe that the modern diaspora--that so many of us find ourselves somewhere else, migrants of some kind--global, multicultural, less rooted, less dependent on our immediate history of family or country to shape ourselves--all of that is preparing us for a looser and freer understanding of ourselves as content whose context can change. Nationalism is on the rise, I say. He nods. That's a throwback. A fear. A refusal of the future. But the future cannot be refused.”

PastFearConsciousnessFutureNationalismArtificial IntelligenceMulticulturalismMigrationMigrantsDiaspora
Book:Frankissstein: A Love Story
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“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 future 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.”

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Book:Sexing the Cherry
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“Earth is ancient now, but all knowledge is stored up in her. She keeps a record of everything that has happened since time began. Of time before time, she says little, and in a language that no one has yet understood. Through time, her secret codes have gradually been broken. Her mud and lava is a message from the past. Of time to come, she says much, but who listens?”

LittlesEarthPastLanguageSecretRecordsHappenedBrokenMessagesUnderstoodAncientCodeMudLava
Book:Weight
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“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
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“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
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“Louise, I would gladly fire the past for you, go and not look back. I have been reckless before, never counting the cost, oblivious to the cost. Now, I've done the sums ahead. I know what it will mean to redeem myself from the accumulations of a lifetime. I know and I don't care. You set before me a space uncluttered by association. It might be a void or it might be a release. Certainly I want to take the risk. I want to take the risk because the life I have stored up is going mouldy.”

KnowsWantLooksMeanHas BeensDoneMightCarePastSpaceFireRiskCostLifetimeDon't CareReleaseI Don't CareAssociationVoidRecklessCountingAccumulationObliviousCounting The Cost
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“i realize that the future, though invisible, has weight. We are in the gravitational pull of past and future. It takes huge energy -speed of light power- to break the gravitational pull. How many of us ever get free of our orbit? We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives. We believe we can be our own miracles, and just a lottery win or Mr.right will make the world new.”

WorldBelieveSelfHelpingLightPastCoursesWinningEnergyRealizingBreakOur LivesSelf HelpHugeDirectWeightMiracleNotionSpeedInvisibleFancyFree WillTeaseLotteryOrbitSpeed Of LightMr Right
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“The Hopi, an Indian tribe, have a language as sophisticated as ours, but no tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist. What does this say about time? Matter, that thing the most solid and the well-known, which you are holding in your hands and which makes up your body, is now known to be mostly empty space. Empty space and points of light. What does this say about the reality of the world?”

WorldWellsDoeMatterBodyHandsRealityLightPastLanguageSpaceKnownEmptyYour BodyIndianDivisionSophisticatedTribesWell KnownEmpty SpacePast PresentPast Present And FuturePoints Of LightIndian Tribes
Book:Sexing the Cherry
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“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.”

LongDifferentSelfPastLostRealizingDifferencesInterestingStageHugeLong TimeGetting OlderLong Time Ago
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“And if I say to you that I am glad of everything we have done together, and sorry that we will not be here together in forty years, laughing at a faded photo of you impersonating a lion, it having withered well, you less so, as we stand fabulously old, in a city that understands what spirit it takes to be old, to be beautiful, to be much looked at, to be itself, to be never quite caught, to have a past, to be content, to have seen much, to have remained, to have continued...”

IfsYearsWellsDoneTogetherPastBeautifulSpiritCitiesLaughingSorryCaughtGladFortyLionsFadedWithered
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“She said she’d often wondered why she wanted to do some things and not do other things at all. Well, it was obvious with some things, but for others, there was no reason there. She’d spent a long time puzzling it out, then she thought that what you’d done in a past life you didn’t need to do again, and what you had to do in the future, you wouldn’t be ready to do now.”

NeedsWellsLongSaidReasonDoneWantedPastReadyLong TimeObviousNo ReasonPast LifePuzzling
Book:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
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