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Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Quotes

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Famous Jeanette Winterson Quotes

“I like to see the people arriving. I like to imagine their lives. It keeps me from thinking too much about my own. A man shouldn't be too introspective. It weakens him. That is the difference between Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway. I'm a Hemingway man myself although I don't believe it is right to hunt lions.”

ThinkingLifeHuntingIntrospectionLivesErnest HemingwayTennessee Williams
Book:The World and Other Places: Stories
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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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“reading is not a passive act. It's a creative act. It's a relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet. I think it's very wrong to write in a way that leaves no room for the reader to maneuver. I don't want to get in the way. What I'd really like to do is to perform the Indian Rope Trick - go higher and higher and eventually disappear.”

ThinkingWayWantWritingPersonsReadingRoomsCreativeReaderHigherDisappearTricksIndianPassiveRope
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“The Anglo-American tradition is much more linear than the European tradition. If you think about writers like Borges, Calvino, Perec or Marquez, they're not bound in the same sort of way. They don't come out of the classic 19th-century novel, which is where all the problems start. 19th-century novels are fabulous and we should all read them, but we shouldn't write them.”

IfsThinkingWayShouldWritingProblemNovelCenturyTraditionBoundsClassicFabulous19th CenturyLinearBorgesAmerican TraditionMarquez
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“One of the problems with watching TV is that you've got a fairly low level of language operating all the time. Quite a small vocabulary and really no conceptual or abstract thinking. That's an issue. If you've got a wide vocabulary, you can learn. The complexities of grammar, in themselves, force you to think about time in a particular way. Force you to widen your outlook on the world.”

IfsThinkingWorldWayProblemLanguageForceLevelsIssuesParticularTvsLowsWideAbstractComplexityVocabularyOutlookGrammarWatching TvLow LevelAbstract Thinking
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue.”

ThinkingLittlesLongArtMotherDesireLanguageCitiesSilencePaintingKeysDespairArt IsTongueFamiliarDeceivingClearingSyntaxMother Tongue
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“When my friend Melot set the trap, I think I knew it. I turned to death full face, as I had turned to love with my whole body. I would let death enter me as you had entered me. You had crept along my blood vessels through the wound, and the blood that circulates returns to the heart. You circulated me, you made me blush like a girl in the hoop of your hands. You were in my arteries and my lymph, you were the colour just under my skin, and if I cut myself, it was you I bled. Red Isolde, alive on my fingers, and always the force of blood pushing you back to my heart.”

IfsThinkingHeartMadeWholeBodyHandsFacesGirlForceCuttingAliveBloodReturnMy HeartMy FriendsRedSkinsFingersWoundsColourPushingTrapsVesselArteriesBlood Vessels
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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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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“For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion - in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence. We are not robots...but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgement.”

PeopleIfsThinkingNeedsFeelsHumansProblemBodyWould BeEmotionEconomyCuttingCloudsJudgementEducateRobotsHighwaysHuman BodyPrecedence
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsibile, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. And I think it means love.”

ThinkingKnowsWorldWayHumansWellsMeanChildrenArtCareValuesTeachKnowingEconomicFiguresHealthyAdultsSafetyYour ChildrenEducateSaneGdpCensusWhat It Means To Be HumanMean Love
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“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
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“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
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“Don't you think it's strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin-sized world? A head on one side, a story on the other. Someone you loved and what happened. That's all there is when you dig in your pockets. The most significant thing is someone else's face. What else is embossed on your hands but her?”

ThinkingWorldShouldStoriesHandsFacesSidesRichHappenedStrangeAdventureSignificantPocketsCoinsTrailsShrinksCamelsSignificant Things
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“What kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call.”

ThinkingLittlesUseDesireNightNamesMorningMinesFlowerHabitBedTablesAssumingSpreadHearingWideNeglectLittle ThingsCheeksDishesCraveThink Of YouSellers
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”

PeopleThinkingHeartLongTwoDifferentRealityPainLeftBehindsToo MuchChangedLong TimeTreatsMadCakeSaltIndifferentLeft BehindChokeThink Of YouYou Changed
Book:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
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“Explore me' you said and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.”

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Book:Written On The Body
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“I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it.”

IfsThinkingKnowsHumansStillsCompanyRolesMissingEmotionalModelsMy FriendsServantRole ModelsBetrayLoyalHuman RelationshipsGod ExistsServant Of God
Book:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
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“It’s better to think of my life like that— part miracle, part madness. It’s better if I accept that I can’t control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; then another boat, another tide.”

IfsThinkingI CanMatterLife IsAcceptingMiracleMadnessBoatDestinationTidesSailTrailsArrivalsThings That MatterShipwreck
Book:Lighthousekeeping
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“Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.”

IfsThinkingFeelsSaidSometimesHurtMemoriesLove IsPaySurpriseDrunkRecognitionMessWorth ItThink Of YouChampagneSurprise MeGiddyI Think Of You
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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“...to live differently, to love differently, to think differently, or to try to. Is the danger of beauty so great that it is better to live without it (the standard model)? Or to fall into her arms fire to fire? There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value. Inside the horror of Nagasaki and Hiroshima lies the beauty of Einstein's E=MC squared”

ThinkingTryingLyingValuesFallFireRiskDangerArmsHorrorModelsStandardsDiscoveryHiroshima
Author:Jeanette Winterson
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