Jeanette Winterson Quotes

249 Sourced Quotes

Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

Jeanette Winterson
I keep telling this story - different people, different places, different times - but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tight rope between two worlds.

Jeanette Winterson
Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.

Jeanette Winterson
To me, these days will never end. I am always there, in that room with her, or if not I, the imprint of myself - my fossil-love

Jeanette Winterson
He's the kind of man who was born to rise and rise: a human elevator.

Jeanette Winterson
Our broken society is not born out of the triumph of the individual, but out of his effacement. He vanishes, she vanishes, ask them who they are and they will offer you a wallet or a child.

Jeanette Winterson
How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.

Jeanette Winterson
The body can endure compromise and the mind can be seduced by it. Only the heart protests.

Jeanette Winterson
Books, for me, are a home. Books don't make a home — they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside.

Jeanette Winterson
The truth is that you can divide your heart in all sorts of interesting ways - a little here, a little there, most banked at home, some of it coined out for a flutter. But love cleaves through the mind's mathematics. Love's lengthways splits the heart in two - the heart where you are, the heart where you want to be. How will you heal your heart when love has split it in two?

Jeanette Winterson
The most prosaic of us betray a belief in the inward life every time we talk about 'my body' rather than 'I.'

Jeanette Winterson
No. Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days.

Jeanette Winterson
Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.

Jeanette Winterson
Time is a player. Time is part of today, not simply a measure of its passing.

Jeanette Winterson
Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. I never shied away from love's hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love.

Jeanette Winterson
Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.

Jeanette Winterson
The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must.

Jeanette Winterson
…I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt.

Jeanette Winterson
Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

Jeanette Winterson
Tell me a story, Pew. What kind of story, child? A story with a happy ending. There's no such thing in all the world. As a happy ending? As an ending.

Jeanette Winterson
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?

Jeanette Winterson
Why do human beings need answers? Partly I suppose because without one, almost any one, the question itself soon sounds silly.

Jeanette Winterson
To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.

Jeanette Winterson
There is no such thing as autobiography. There's only art and lies.

Jeanette Winterson
Yes I will come for you. Roll my strength into a ball for you. Throw myself across chance for you. I will be the bridge or the pulley because you are the dream.

Jeanette Winterson