Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

“We are friends and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldnt 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.”

“This hole in my heart is in the shape of you. No one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”

“You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play.”

“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?”

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.”

“Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.”

“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.”

“Its true that heroes are inspiring, but mustnt they also do some rescuing if they are to be worthy of their name? Would Wonder Woman matter if she only sent commiserating telegrams to the distressed?”

“Very few people ever manage what nature manages without effort and mostly without fail. We dont know who we are or how to function, much less how to bloom. Blind nature. Homo Sapiens. Whos kidding whom?”

“You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?”

“I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still dont think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I dont even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadnt rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I cant settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy me and be destroyed by me.”

“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 peoples emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. This is not fancy. If a potter has an idea, she makes it into a pot, and it exists beyond her, in its own separate life. She uses a physical substance to display her thoughts. If I use a metaphysical substance to display my thoughts, I might be anywhere at one time, influencing a number of different things, just as the potter and her pottery can exert influence in different places. Theres a chance that Im not here at all, that all the parts of me, running along all the choices I did and didnt make, for a moment brush agains teach other.”

“I dont want the Thatcher years back, but I dont want the Brown-Prescott years either. I am prepared to give David Cameron his chance - even though he is a Tory.”

“What happened to her, what goes on happening to her, does not account for her work.”

“There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each others names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call hyou home? Only the one who knows your name.”

“God is just a concept, but music is tangible.”

“I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.”

You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?

As your lover describes you, so you are.

I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.