Quotes by Jeanette Winterson - Page 12

In this life you have to be your own hero. By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way. Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero who’s usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don’t worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) he’ll find the treasure.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Clever
Hero
Stupid
Copy Quote
Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall. As you lay on your back paddling in space you might notice your feet had fled your head. You are stretching slowly slowly, getting longer, your joints are slipping away from their usual places. There is no connection between your shoulder and your arm. You will break up bone by bone, fractured from who you are, drifting away now, the centre cannot hold.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Fall
Law
Two
Copy Quote
St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry. She wanted to be a nun. She hoped I would be a priest and saved to give me an education while my friends plaited rope and trailed after the plough. I can't be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I'm not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion? She says he can. Then he should.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Heart
Mother
Passion
Copy Quote
I know our feelings can be so unbearable that we employ ingenious strategies – unconscious strategies – to keep those feelings away. We do a feelings-swap, where we avoid feeling sad or lonely or afraid or inadequate, and feel angry instead. It can work the other way, too – sometimes you do need to feel angry, not inadequate; sometimes you do need to feel love and acceptance, and not the tragic drama of your life. It takes courage to feel the feeling – and not trade it on the feelings-exchange, or even transfer it altogether to another person.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Acceptance
Drama
Lonely
Copy Quote
I learned capacity for self-reflection very early, finding it through interior monologues that books are so good at and that visual media is so bad at because it's so boring - nothing's happening. In a book, you can be inside the narrator's head for 50 pages, and nothing needs to happen. Then you learn to be inside your own head without something needing to happen. It's a very good antidote to a crazy, restless, "what's next?" culture - that you can just be in your own head and nothing is happening except that this is a rich place. I love that.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Book
Crazy
Reflection
Copy Quote
This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it's getting late. I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Moon
Stars
Wall
Copy Quote
In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Air
Glasses
People
Copy Quote
Today, the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a café. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Real
Selfish
Who I Am
Copy Quote
People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Heart
Pain
Reality
Copy Quote
Now that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself. I know that the earth is not flat but my feet are. I know that space is curved but my brain has been condoned by habit to grow in a straight line. What I call light is my own blend of darkness. What I call a view is my hand-painted trompe-l'oeil. I run after knowledge like a ferret down a ferret hole. My limitations, I call the boundaries of what can be known. I interpret the world by confusing other people's psychology with my own.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Running
Light
Views
Copy Quote
The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself. When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. Its a reference point, not an end in itself, even though you seem to be following it. So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself. The end of all your exploring will be to cease from exploration and know the place for the first time.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Love
Time
Stars
Copy Quote
When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed - for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little. Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Home
Lying
Night
Copy Quote
I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me. So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Powerful
School
Stupid
Copy Quote
When my friend Melot set the trap, I think I knew it. I turned to death full face, as I had turned to love with my whole body. I would let death enter me as you had entered me. You had crept along my blood vessels through the wound, and the blood that circulates returns to the heart. You circulated me, you made me blush like a girl in the hoop of your hands. You were in my arteries and my lymph, you were the colour just under my skin, and if I cut myself, it was you I bled. Red Isolde, alive on my fingers, and always the force of blood pushing you back to my heart.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Girl
Cutting
Heart
Copy Quote
It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book -- which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little -- and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Book
Hurt
Successful
Copy Quote
At bed-time I went into my room and put out the light. I didn't get undressed. I lay on my bed and looked out of the window at the stars. I read in a book that the stars can take you anywhere. I've never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helmets. If I were up there on the moon, or by the Milky Way, I'd want to feel the stars round my head. I'd want them in my hair the way they are in paintings of the gods. I'd want my whole body to feel the space, the empty space and points of light. That's how dancers must feel, dancers and acrobats, just for a second, that freedom.
Jeanette Winterson / Writer
Book
Moon
Stars
Copy Quote

Related Writer Authors

Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Oscar Wilde
Writer
Monday, Oct 16, 1854
Friday, Nov 30, 1900
Zoltan Istvan
Writer
Zoe Valdes
Writer
Saturday, May 02, 1959
Zlata Filipović
Writer
Wednesday, Dec 03, 1980
Zitkala-Sa
Writer
Tuesday, Feb 22, 1876
Wednesday, Jan 26, 1938
Ziauddin Sardar
Writer
Wednesday, Oct 31, 1951
Zelig Pliskin
Writer
Zan Perrion
Writer
Saturday, Jul 02, 1966
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Writer
Yusuf Idris
Writer
Thursday, May 19, 1927
Thursday, Aug 01, 1991
Young-Ha Kim
Writer
Monday, Nov 11, 1968
Yoshiki Nakamura
Writer
Tuesday, Jun 17, 1969
Yoko Ogawa
Writer
Friday, Mar 30, 1962
Yiyun Li
Writer
Saturday, Nov 04, 1972

View All Writer Quotes

Top Authors

Ronald Reagan
40Th US President
Monday, Feb 06, 1911
Saturday, Jun 05, 2004
Donald Trump
45Th President Of The United States
Friday, Jun 14, 1946
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991
Mae West
Actress
Thursday, Aug 17, 1893
Saturday, Nov 22, 1980
John Keats
Poet
Saturday, Oct 31, 1795
Friday, Feb 23, 1821
Dwight D. Eisenhower
34Th U.s. President
Tuesday, Oct 14, 1890
Friday, Mar 28, 1969
Billy Graham
Evangelist
Thursday, Nov 07, 1918
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philologist
Tuesday, Oct 15, 1844
Saturday, Aug 25, 1900
Mother Teresa
Saint
Friday, Aug 26, 1910
Friday, Sep 05, 1997
Maya Angelou
Author
Wednesday, Apr 04, 1928
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Julius Caesar
Roman Dictator
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Heraclitus
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Charles Spurgeon
Preacher
Thursday, Jun 19, 1834
Sunday, Jan 31, 1892
John C. Maxwell
Author
Thursday, Feb 20, 1947
George Orwell
Novelist
Thursday, Jun 25, 1903
Saturday, Jan 21, 1950

View All Authors

Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 12

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Writer Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page