Quotes from Jeanette Winterson

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.

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

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.

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.

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 borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that taking but when you open them there's nothing there.

Why is the measure of love loss?

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.

There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.

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...

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.

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

I don't understand why people talk of art as a luxury when it's a mind-altering possibility.

What's invisible to us is also crucial for our own well-being.

The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.

The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness.

True stories are the ones that lie open at the border, allowing a crossing, a further frontier. The final frontier is just science fiction--don't believe it. Like the universe, there is no end.

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

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

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 wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

I hate the word lesbian; it tells you nothing; its only purpose is to inflame.