“Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.”

— Jeanette Winterson

Source: Written on the Body

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat…" by Jeanette Winterson?

Jeanette Winterson 187

English writer 1959

Related quotes

“Did you know that if you removed all nerve cells from your brain and laid them out end-to-end in a straight line, you would die?”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from documentary Traceroute

“The sea raises you to your feet. And dead calm.
Strands of light hold your hand. Now you have left
this shore. Now you are in the wind of an invisible sail.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Mirkka Rekola, Kuka lukee kanssasi (Who is Reading with You), 1990; Translated by Sari Hantula. Quoted at Mirkka Rekola http://www.electricverses.net/sakeet.php?poet=22&poem=645&language=3, at electricverses.net, accessed 20-03-2017.

“You need to stop thinking with your head, Mud Boy, and start thinking with your heart.”

Artemis sighed. The heart was an organ for pumping oxygen-rich blood to the cells. It could no more think than an apple could tap-dance.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

“You should employ your little grey cells”

Agatha Christie book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Source: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

“Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: "Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.
"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise."
In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.
One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead."
She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?"
Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.
The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.
Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."