Quotes from Jeanette Winterson

I am in love with her; not a fantasy or a myth or a creature of my own making. Her. A person who is not me. I invented Bonaparte as much as he invented himself. My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.

In the fossil record of our existence, there is no trace of love. You cannot find it held in the earth's crust, waiting to be discovered. The long bones of our ancestors show nothing of their hearts. Their last meal is sometimes preserved in peat or in ice, but their thoughts and feelings are gone.

The trouble with babies is that they are made like a safe – no way to see what's inside and no guarantee that the effort will be worth the trouble.

If I am a wound would love be my salve? If I am speechless would love be a mouth?

Moon's gravitational pull means that earth doesn't wobble too much. Scientists call it obliquity. The moon holds us fast.

koca bir fili gökyüzüne sal?vermek bir kad?n?n omuzlar?na olmad?k sorumluluklar yükler.

Biology is destiny if you work for the patriarchy.

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.

Mi piace il modo in cui i gatti amano stare un po' dentro e un po' fuori, per assecondare sia il loro lato domestico sia quello selvatico, e anch'io mi sento selvatica e domestica. Posso stare in casa, ma solo se la porta è aperta.

Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity.

Love affairs are discoveries of new worlds.

So the past, because it is the past, is only malleable where once it was flexible.

He hates for hate's sake. There are people like that. People who have everything. Money, power, sex. When they have everything they play for more sophisticated stakes than the rest of us. There are no thrills left to that man. The sun will never rise and delight him. he will never be lost in a strange town and forced to ask his way. I can't buy him. I can't tempt him. He wants a life for a life.

Le chiesi perchè non voleva libri in casa e lei rispose: Il guaio di un libro è che scopri cosa contiene solo quando è troppo tardi. Io pensai: Troppo tardi per cosa? Cominciai a leggere di nascosto [...] ogni volta che aprivo le pagine di un libro mi chiedevo se questa volta sarebbe stato troppo tardi: avrei dovuto un sorso fatale che mi avrebbe trasformato per sempre.

I say I'm in love with her, what does that mean? It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly she explains me to myself; like genius she is ignorant of what she does.

This is the city of disguises. What you are one day will not constrain you on the next. You may explore yourself freely and, if you have wit or wealth, no one will stand in your way. This city was built on wit and wealth and we have a fondness for both, though they do not have to appear in tandem.

Let me read to you," said Roger Nowell. "It is a night for reading.

The inside and the outside of our lives are each the shell where we learn to live.

There are different sorts of treachery, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it.

My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she'd do what most people do when confronted with something they don't understand: Panic.

I could see in her a piece of the bright hope I once had in myself and it made me sour and angry. It made me feel sorry for her too. I wanted to take both her hands in mine, look her in the eye, and let her see that the world isn't interested in a little black girl's dreams.

Fools stay in love. I am a fool.

Walls protect and walls limit.

I would love you as a bird loves flight, as meat loves salt, as a dog loves chase, as water finds its own level. Or I would not love you at all.