Quotes from Jeanette Winterson

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

Art saved me it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.

If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you.

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

Anything outside marriage seems like freedom and excitement.

I believe in communication books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places.

However it is debased or misinterpreted, love is a redemptive feature. To focus on one individual so that their desires become superior to yours is a very cleansing experience.

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.

I don't read reviews because by then it's too late - whatever anyone says, the book won't change. It is written.

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

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.

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. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.

While I can't have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I'd take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I'd wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say 'Will you…' my answer is 'Yes', before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.

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

As your lover describes you, so you are.

What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.

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.

He: What's the matter with you? Me: Nothing. Nothing was slowly clotting my arteries. Nothing slowly numbing my soul. Caught by nothing, saying nothing, nothingness becomes me. When I am nothing they will say surprised in the way that they are forever surprised, "but there was nothing the matter with her.

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.