Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way.

...to create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement. Once created, the creature was separate from the creator, and needed no seconding to fully exist.

She had other favourite lines. Our gas oven blew up. The repairman came out and said he didnt like the look of it, which was unsurprising as the oven and the wall were black. Mrs Winterson replied, Its a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature. That is a heavy load for a gas oven to bear. She liked that phrase and it was more than once used towards me; when some well-wisher asked how I was, Mrs W looked down and sighed, Shes a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, and a fault to nature.This was even worse for me than it had been for the gas oven. I was particularly worried about the dead part, and wondered which buried and unfortunate relative I had so offended.

We live as best we may in a world of worms.

I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I cant give up love. Maybe its the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.

Even now when Im furious, what I would like to do is to punch the infuriating person flat on the ground. That solves nothing I know, and I spent a lot of time understanding my own violence, which is not of the pussycat kind. There are people who could never commit murder; I am not one of those people. Its better to know it, better to know who you are, and what lies in you, and what you could do, might do, under extreme provocation.

I cant believe that we have reached the end of everything. The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but were here, were alive, were the human race, we have survived wars and terrorism and scarcity and global famine, and we have made it back from the brink, not once but many times. History is not a suicide note - its a record of our survival.

And so, from the first, we separated our pleasure. She lay on the rug and I lay at right angles to her so that only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all things pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture.

I kissed her and forgot death.

Our contradictions are never so to ourselves.

And what is enlightenment anyway but delusions we can live with?

People like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so that they know what to believe and what not to believe.

Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it’s a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don’t believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It’s all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat’s cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History should be a hammock for swinging and a game for playing, the way cats play. Claw it, chew it, rearrange it and at bedtime it’s still a ball of string full of knots. Nobody should mind. Some people make a lot of money out of it. Publishers do well, children, when bright, can come top. It’s an all-purpose rainy day pursuit, this reducing of stories called history.

Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear...Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.

Christmas is about community, collaboration, celebration. Done right, Christmas can be an antidote to the Me First mentality that has rebranded capitalism as neo-liberalism. The shopping mall isnt our true home, nor is it a public space, though, as libraries, parks, playgrounds, museums and sports facilities disappear, for many the fake friendliness of the mall is the only public space left, apart from the streets

After loss of Identity, the most potent modern terror, is loss of sexuality, or, as Descartes didn’t say, I fuck therefore I am.

I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.

One thing you notice about progress, kid, is that it doesnt happen to everyone.

Well done, my fine fellow out of my womb. What have you gained? Nothing! And oh, what have you lost? Everything!

I never wanted to find my birth parents - if one set of parents felt like a misfortune, two sets would be self-destructive...I had no idea that you could like your parents or that they could love you enough to let you be yourself.