Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

She was fragile, gentle, wide awake in a sleeping world.

What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?

She was a monster, but she was my monster.

A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?

I came to this city to escape.

I dream of flight, not to be as the angels are, but to rise above the smallness of it all. The smallnesss that I am. Against the daily death the iconography of wings.

We did photograph albums, best dresses, favourite novels, and once someones own novel. It was about a week in a telephone box with a pair of pyjamas called Adolf Hitler. The heroine was a piece of string with a knot in it.

The library was quiet. It was busy but it was quiet and I thought it must be like this in a monastery where you had company and sympathy but your thoughts were your own.

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?

Rights begin where love ends. Shall we argue over who is the most to blame?

Once you start recognizing your own obsessions, you know you’re getting old.

Most kids grow up leaving something out for Santa at Christmas time when he comes down the chimney. I used to make presents for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down.

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

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

The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.

“Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.”

“The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.”

“What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning?”

“Time is a player. Time is part of today, not simply a measure of its passing.”