Jeanette Winterson - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)

28 Sourced Quotes

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If you think about something for long enough,' she explained, more than likely, that thing will happen.' She tapped her head. It's all in the mind.

Jeanette Winterson
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.

Jeanette Winterson
As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.

Jeanette Winterson
There are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.

Jeanette Winterson
If I let them take away my demons, I'll have to give up what I've found.

Jeanette Winterson
One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but thats quite hard to say casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It's not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, and then being on somebody else's.

Jeanette Winterson
In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.

Jeanette Winterson
She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it.

Jeanette Winterson
Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

Jeanette Winterson
Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

Jeanette Winterson
If God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it.

Jeanette Winterson
There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won't complain.

Jeanette Winterson
But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.

Jeanette Winterson
I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

Jeanette Winterson
Here is some advice. If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches....

Jeanette Winterson
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.

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
Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time.

Jeanette Winterson
The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.

Jeanette Winterson
To change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

Jeanette Winterson
Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you as changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

Jeanette Winterson
I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.

Jeanette Winterson
Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

Jeanette Winterson
They believed that if a mouse found your hair clippings and built a nest with them you got a headache. If the nest was big enough, you might go mad.

Jeanette Winterson
It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change.

Jeanette Winterson