Jeanette Winterson citations

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

“Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.”

“Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.”

“Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.”

“Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.”

“By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.”

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

“There are those who say that temptation can be barricaded beyond the door. The ones who think that stray desires can be driven out of the heart like the moneychangers from the temple. Maybe they can, if you patrol your weak points day and night, don't look, don't smell, don't dream.”

“I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.”

“I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.”

“I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject.”

“The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.”

“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.”

“When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.”

“It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.”

“To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.”

“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”

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”

“Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.”

“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.”

“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?”

“They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?”

“do it from the heart or not at all.”

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

“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.”