Quotes from Jeanette Winterson

My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.

Nobody knows anything about Shakespeare the person. It's all legend, it is all rumor.

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.

I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.

Life is so simple when you're just doing your job.

The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.

Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.

What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?

She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it.

They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

do it from the heart or not at all.

Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.

There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.

Yes, we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check their diary when we arrange to meet.

Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.

I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.

I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.