Jeanette Winterson: Quotes about love

“It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.”

“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.”

“Do you fall in love often?"

Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.”

“Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don’t give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it…”

“Why is the measure of love… loss? pg.9”

“She looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that's partly why they love me, and partly why they leave”

“Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”

“What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?”

“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.”

“I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.”

“There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance.”

“You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.”

“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.”

“A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it?”

“I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.”

“I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.”

“You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?”

“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”

“If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.”