Quotes from Jeanette Winterson

Mia madre non voleva che i libri cadessero nelle mie mani. Non aveva previsto che io potessi cadere nei libri, che mi infilassi dentro di loro per stare al sicuro.

Could so many straightforward ordinary lives suddenly become men to kill and women to rape?

Dreams were so tiring that she wondered how anybody ever dared to go to sleep at night.

The wind blew and it didn't seem important, but tomorrow when the wind blew, it would be important. All the familiar things were getting different meanings.

It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

Just as they were driving off on his horrible Iron Curtain motor bike, he patted my arm, told me he knew, and forgave us both. There was only one thing I could do; mustering all my spit, I did it.

A sign of the times. But the times has so many signs that if we read them all we'd die of heartbreak.

I love life. Life is too precious to me not to live it fully.

Stories are where I live - they are physical three-dimensional places to me. When I was a kid and locked in the coal hole for various crimes, I had a choice: count coal - a limited activity. Tell myself a story - an unlimited world of the imagination.

In the cell was a rack, a winch, a furnace, a set of branding irons, a pot for melting wax, nails of different lengths. A thumbscrew, a pair of flesh-tongs, heavy tweezers, a set of surgical instruments, a series of small metal trays, ropes, wire, preparations of quicklime, a hood and a blindfold.

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. Some people's emancipation are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their body. [...] There's a chance that I'm not here at all, that all the parts of me, running along all the choices I did and didn't make, for a moment brush against each other. That I am still an evangelist in the North, as well as the person who ran away.

I became my own ladder and trapdoor to other worlds. I was my own disguise. The sight of a figure, far off, on some journey of his own, was enough to spark my imagination towards a tragedy or a miracle.

Whites find it harder to believe in something to believe in.

Sanat s?rad???d?r; al???lagelmiÅŸ yöntemle onu ehlileÅŸtirerek ya da yemleyerek kal?plara sokmaya çal??mak nafiledir. Kim hayvanat bahçesine gidip de aslan? biraz olsun anlam?? ki?

The heart. Carbon-based primitive in a silicon world.

Being a great poet doesn't always mean that you write great poetry.

If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass – they have to – because time passes.

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights.

London is perpetual; a constant streaming present hurrying towards a receding future.

Yet as we travel deeper into the strange world of the story, the feeling we get is of being understood - which is odd when you think about it, because at school learning is based on whether or not we understand what we are reading. In fact it is the story (or the poem) that is understanding us. Books read us back to ourselves.

Raccontami una storia, Pew. Che storia, piccola? Una a lieto fine? Non ne troverai una in tutto il mondo. Nessun lieto fine, dunque? Nessuna fine.

He liked city walking. He didn't want to have to go to that place called countryside to take a walk. He wanted to stuff his hands in his pockets, set his internal compass vaguely east or south and wander till he was tired enough to get the bus home.

A man needs understanding because he is existentially alone. He stares into the darkness. That was the difference between men and women, Leo thought. Men need groups and gangs and sport and clubs and institutions and women because men know that there is only nothingness and self-doubt. Women were always trying to make a connection, build a relationship. As though one human being could know another.

Her hair cinnabar red, her body all the treasures of Egypt. There won't be another find like you Louise. I won't see anybody else.