Quotes from Jeanette Winterson

In spite of what the monks say, you can meet God without getting up early. You can meet God lounging in the pew. The hardship is a man-made device because man cannot exist without passion. Religion is somewhere between fear and sex. And God? truly? In his own right, without our voices speaking for him? Obsessed, I think, but not passionate.

It was a dark gift but not a useless one.

Avem nevoie de cuvinte pentru c? familiile nefericite sunt ni?te conspira?ii ale t?cerii. Cel care rupe t?cerea nu este iertat niciodat?.

When love is unreliable and you are a child, you assume that it is the nature of love – its quality – to be unreliable.

I sat at the back, listening to the music or mumbling through the service. I'm never tempted by God, but I like his trappings.

She grew in secret, away from their eyes. Outwardly she was obedient and loving, but inside she was feeding a hunger—

We get somewhere we couldn't go otherwise and we profit from the trip, but we can't stay there, it isn't our world, and we shouldn't let that world come crashing down into the one we can inhabit.

I know nothing of my biological parents. They live on a lost continent of DNA. Like Atlantis, all record of them is sunk. They are guesswork, speculation, mythology. The only proof I have of them is myself, and what proof is that, so many times written over? Written on the body is a secret code, only visible in certain lights. I do not know my time of birth. I am not entirely sure of the date. Having brought no world with me, I made one.

Whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.

And I thought about women. All these books, and how long had it taken for women to write their share, and why were their still so few women poets and novelists, and even fewer who were considered to be important?

There's a lot of talk about freedom. It's like the Holy Grail, we grow up hearing about it, it exists, we're sure of that, and every person has his own idea of where.

He's only a dog. Yes but he has found me out.

When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in wonderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me. And when I had looked at myself and grown accustomed to who I was, I was not afraid to hate parts of me because I wanted to be worthy of the mirror bearer. Then, when I had regarded myself for the first time, I regarded the world and saw it to be more various and beautiful than I thought.

We are a lukewarm people and our longing for freedom is our longing for love. If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.

el amor deja una herida que a su vez deja una cicatriz.

God Forgive Me,' I say, and feel pity for a Deity that must concern Himself with pots of preserve. Had I lordship of the Universe I should roll men lke marbles in the pan of space and never ask where they stopped or fell.

I may not spare you, I said. For I would rather spare all those who would come into contact with you, were you to be left alive.

El amor es tan fuerte como la muerte.

This Captain had been brought up in Istanbul. His mind was made of minarets and domes. He capped himself with spacious ease. He was his own call to prayer.

It takes much longer to leave the psychic place than the physical place.

Writers are often exiles, outsiders, runaways and castaways.

She hated the small and the mean, and yet that is all she had. I bought a few big houses myself along the way, simply because I was trying out something for her. In fact, my tastes were more modest -- but you don't know that until you have bought and sold for the ghost of your mother.

Yes, the past is another country, but once that we can visit and once there we can bring back the things we need.

Keep me in the mop bucket or the slot where the grill pan goes, but don't let me go because I love you.