Quotes from Jeanette Winterson

When my mother heard about this, she was furious, and she crossed Nellie off her prayer list. My dad put her on his instead, so she didn't miss out.

I am not a machine, there is only so much and no more that I can absorb of the misery of my kind, when my tears are exhausted a dullness takes place, and out of that dullness a terrible callousness, so that I look on suffering and feel it not.

No man believes what he does not feel to be true. I should like to unbelieve myself. I sleep at night and wake in the morning hoping to be gone. it never happens. One knee forward, one knee bent, I bear the world.

our beings struggle in our bodies like light trapped in a jar, and our bodies struggle in this world as a beast of burden chafes its yoke, and this world itself hangs alone on its noose, strung among the indifferent stars.

fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed.

I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices under water.

Now if I was aping men, she'd have every right to be disgusted. As far as I was concerned, men were something you had around the place...not particularly interesting, but quite harmless.

Some people say that the best stories have no words. They weren't brought up to Lighthousekeeping. It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case always the wrong size to fit the template called language.

We're here to keep you in one piece, if you ignore us, you're quite likely to end up in two pieces, or lots of pieces, it's all part of the paradox.

I was only good at one thing: words. I had read more, much more, than anybody else, and I knew how words worked in the way that some boys knew how engines worked.

Life, we imagine, is familiar enough until we begin to tell it to another. Then, observe the wonder on their faces--sometimes it is wonder, often it is horror. Only in the living of it does life seem ordinary. In the telling of it we find ourselves strangers among the strange.

Neither parent spoke. Milo stood between them like a lighthouse between the rocks and the shipwreck.

About her life to come, when she'd have a mansion and no neighbors. All she ever wanted was for everyone to go away. And when I did she never forgave me. She loved miracle stories, probably because her life was a far away from a miracle as Jupiter is from the Earth. She believed in miracles, even though she never got one-- well, maybe she did get one, but that was me, and she didn't know that miracles often come in disguise.

What is your story sir? I said. That is the dilemma, he replied. I do not know if I am the teller or the tale.

Donde naces — en lo que naces, el lugar, la historia del lugar, cómo esa historia se imbrica con la tuya— deja una impronta en quién eres, por mucho que digan los expertos en globalización.

Only in death may we be reunited with those we have lost. For myself, I do not seek death but neither do I fear that which will bring me peace.

Look at all that rubbish, she said, watching the electric van slowly whirr from bin to bin, little men in gloves removing it all. They're taking it away, I said. Where to? she said. It just gets moved around dearie, that's all.

They live in the opposite of the past. I said, You mean the future? No, Ry. The opposite of the past is the present. Anyone can live in a past that is gone or a future that does not exist. The opposite of either position is the present.

The planets are bodies in the solar system and so are we. You and I in elliptical orbs circling life. It is life we want, but we daren't come too close for fear it might burn us away, this life in its intensity.

When the children of Israel left Egypt, they were guided by the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. For them, this did not seem to be a problem. For me, it was an enormous problem. The pillar of cloud was a fog, perplexing and impossible. I didn't understand the ground rules. The daily world was a world of Strange Notions, without form, and therefore void. I comforted myself as best I could by always rearranging their version of the facts

Our habits and our fears make our choices. We are an algorithm of ourselves-- if you liked that you may also like this.

She wanted to kiss the hesitation of his throat.

I love the natural world and I never ceased to see it. The beauty of the trees and fields, of hills and streams, of the changing colours, of the small creatures so busy and occupied. My long hours walking or sitting in the field with my back against the wall, watching the clouds and the weather, allowed me some steadiness. It was because I knew all this would be there when I was not that I thought I could go. The world was beautiful. I was as speck in it.

Gertrude drives on. She says, 'Right or wrong, this is the road and we are on it