Jeanette Winterson Quotes

I don't understand why people talk of art as a luxury when it's a mind-altering possibility.

The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.

Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness. We gamble. Some do it at the gaming table, some do not. You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play.

unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven.

With animal behavior, they're all fine until you introduce some rogue element into the cage, and then they go crazy.

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.

If people aren't educated, they can't question. If they can't question, they can't change anything, which is great for the status quo and all the people who can question them at their own level.

The mind will not believe in death, perhaps because, as far as the mind is concerned, death never happens.

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.

I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

[Fiction and poetry] are medicines, they're doses, and they heal the rupture that reality makes on the imagination.

The rebellion of art is a daily rebellion against the state of living death routinely called real life.

Language is a finding place, not a hiding place.

London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.

I think it would be very foolish not to take the irrational seriously.

One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

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

We are told not to privilege one story above another. All the stories must be told. Well, maybe that's true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.

I would rather have regrets of excess than regrets of denial.

Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

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.

Anything outside marriage seems like freedom and excitement.

I dreamed I was a single moment in a single day. A note struck and vanished. A sounding. A reckoning. Gone.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.

In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.

When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself.

It may be that you are settled in another place it may be that you are happy but the one who took your heart wields final power.

Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough.

If you should leave me, my heart will turn to water and flood away.

In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun.

History is not a suicide note -- it is a record of our survival.

I think people deceive themselves about themselves, particularly as they get older.

I've never been tempted by God but I like his trappings.

If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language.

Reading is where the wild things are.

Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.

However it is debased or misinterpreted, love is a redemptive feature. To focus on one individual so that their desires become superior to yours is a very cleansing experience.

Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.

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

Age is information failure. The body loses fluency.

If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.

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

The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love.