Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

you act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn’t belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you.

Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

There are three kinds of big endings: Revenge. Tragedy. Forgiveness. Revenge and Tragedy often happen together.Forgiveness unblocks the future. (p.225)

The journey is about coming home....There is always the return. And the wound will take you there. It is a blood-trail. (p. 220,222)

If the demons lived anywhere it was here.

I have ridden out all the storms,” said Shakespeare, “even the ones I wrote myself. Here, look, it begins…

Shakespeare shook his head and sunk his chin into his ruff, making him look more owl-like than ever. “I have written about other worlds often enough. I have said what I can say. There are many kinds of reality. This is but one kind.

Shakespeare,” he thought as he scribbled away. “Foolish fancy. This is life as it is lived.

Art is enchantment and artists have the right of spells. ... The success of later Shakespeare is the success of spells, where every element, however uneven, however incredible, is fastened to the next with perfect authority. The enchanted world shimmers but does not waver. A Midsummer Nights Dream is the first of his plays to accomplish this, The Tempest is enchantments apotheosis.

What is luck, he said, but the ability to exploit accidents?

There is always a city. There is always a civilization. There is always a barbarian with a pickaxe. Sometimes you are the city, sometimes you are the civilization, but to become that city, that civilization, you once took a pickaxe and destroyed what you hated, and what you hated is what you did not understand.

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

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior—benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as ones own chaos was also brought under control.Whenever I am troubled, said the librarian, I think about the Dewey decimal system.Then what happens? asked the junior, rather overawed.Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course—as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.

Theres no such thing as a limited victory. Every victory leaves another resentment, another defeated and humiliated people. Another place to guard and defend and fear.

The winged word. The mercurial word. The word that is both moth and lamp. The word that is itself and more. the associative word light with meanings. The word not netted by meaning. The exact word wide. The word not whore nor cenobite. The word unlied.

Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip you on the stairs, wake you at night-time. A black hole sucks up its surroundings and even light never escapes. Better then to ask no questions? Better then to be a contented pig than an unhappy Socrates? Since factory farming is tougher on pigs than it is on philosophers Ill take a chance.

You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it’s not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?

We were the lucky ones, the notthese, we were the ones who had survived the aerial bombing and fire-clusters, the final flash. Regrettable, unavoidable, a war to end all wars, a war for democracy, a war for freedom, peaceful war. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes war is right. But to the broken and the dead, to the wounded and the maimed, to the exploded and the shrapnelshattered, to minds gone dark, to eyes that have seen agony no tears can wash away, it hardly matters that the dead language of war repeats itself through time. The bodies that can say nothing have the last word. What is it — the last word? No.No more war.

gifts — that strange word, a signifier meaning disappointment you can hold in your hands.

Why doesnt she want me? The sun is rising now, but it is 93,000,000 miles away and I cant get warm... She wont be cold. She has the sun inside her.