Jeanette Winterson: Trending quotes

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Jeanette Winterson: 374 quotes11 likes

“I was a miracle in that I could have taken her out of her life and into a life she would have liked a lot. It never happened, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there to happen. All of that has been a brutal lesson to me in not overlooking or misunderstanding what is actually there, in your hands, now. We always think the thing we need to transform everything– the miracle– is elsewhere, but often it is right next to us. Sometimes it is us, ourselves.”

Jeanette Winterson

Source: Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? (2011), p.31

“She thought of an article she had once seen on mind control. Apparently if there was a person fiendish enough to set about interfering with your life, the only thing you could do was to concentrate hard on someone they were unlikely ever to have heard of called Martin Amis. The particular blankness of this image was guaranteed to protect from any subtle force, but Gloria realised with a sinking heart that it was too late now.”

Jeanette Winterson

Page 22.
See also Martin Amis himself.
Boating For Beginners (1985)

“He's a curious man; a shrug of the shoulders and a wink and that's him. He's never thought it odd that his daughter cross-dresses for a living and sells second-hand purses on the side. But then, he's never thought it odd that his daughter was born with webbed feet.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion (1987), p.61

“Only the impossible is worth the effort.”

Jeanette Winterson

The Powerbook (2000)

“Misery is a vacuum. A space without air, a suffocated dead place, the abode of the miserable. Misery is a tenement block, rooms like battery cages, sit over your own droppings, lie on your own filth. Misery is a no U-turns, no stopping road. Travel down it pushed by those behind, tripped by those in front. Travel down it at furious speed though the days are mummified in lead. It happens so fast once you get started, there's no anchor from the real world to slow you down, nothing to hold on to. Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall. Whatever your private hell, you'll find millions like it in Misery. This is the town where everyone's nightmares come true.”

Jeanette Winterson

Written on the Body (1992)

“When was the last time you looked at anything, solely, and concentratedly, and for its own sake? Ordinary life passes in a near blur. If we go to the theatre or the cinema, the images before us change constantly, and there is the distraction of language. Our loved ones are so well known to us that there is no need to look at them, and one of the gentle jokes of married life is that we do not.”

Jeanette Winterson

Art Objects (1995)

“I felt as if I had blundered into someone else's life by chance, discovered I wanted to stay, then blundered back into my own, without a clue, a hint, or a way of finishing the story.”

Jeanette Winterson

The Powerbook (2000)

“I am a glass man, but there is no light in me that can shine across the sea. I shall lead no one home, save no lives, not even my own.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Lighthousekeeping (2004)

“That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the worlds tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.”

Jeanette Winterson book Sexing the Cherry

Source: Sexing the Cherry (1989), p.13

“Decision, the moment of saying yes, is prompted by something deeper; recognition. I recognise you; I know you again, from a dream or another life, or perhaps even from a chance sighting in a café, years ago.”

Jeanette Winterson

Weight (2005)

“My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

The Passion (1987)

“Religion is somewhere between fear and sex. And God? Truly? In his own right, without our voices speaking for him? Obsessed I think, but not passionate.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion (1987), p.74

“What to say? That the end of love is a haunting. A haunting of dreams. A haunting of silence. Haunted by ghosts it is easy to become a ghost. Life ebbs. The pulse is too faint. Nothing stirs you. Some people approve of this and call it healing. It is not healing. A dead body feels no pain.”

Jeanette Winterson

The Powerbook (2000)

“In the West, we avoid painful encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it. Our present obsession with the past has the double advantage of making new work seem raw and rough compared to the cosy patina of tradition, whilst refusing tradition its vital connection to what is happening now.”

Jeanette Winterson

Art Objects (1995)

“If art, all art, is concerned with truth, then a society in denial will not find much in use for it.”

Jeanette Winterson

Art Objects (1995)

“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 book The World and Other Places

The World and Other Places (1998)

“A sense of social hierarchy prevented Mrs Munde from actually telling the lousy bastard to get out, so instead she began to think evil thoughts. She had once read an article on mind control, explaining that the best way to bend someone to your will was to think of a gooey mudlike substance called Cliff Richard and direct it at the object of your intent. Such were the marshmellow-suffocating properties of this image that the victim fell instantly into an undignified froth. Putty in your hands in fact. It didn't seem to work. The stranger was insensitive as well as intrusive. Mrs Munde gave it one last go till the kitchen air was thick with Cliff Richard. The stranger suddenly made a little squeaking noise and fell sideways.
'Stop it, stop it!' he cried. 'You're pulping my brain.”

Jeanette Winterson

'Well go away then,' sulked Mrs Munde, releasing her victim, not through generosity but because she found the image too nauseating to continue.
Page 28.
See Wikipedia on Cliff Richard.
Boating For Beginners (1985)

“To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself I stay on the run.”

Jeanette Winterson

The Powerbook (2000)

“Here is some advice. If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches ….”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)

“My heart returns to me what I turn away. I am my own master but not always master of myself.”

Jeanette Winterson

The Powerbook (2000)