Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson, OBEis an award-winning English writer, who became famous with her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against conventional values. Some of her other novels have explored gender polarities and sexual identity. Winterson is also a broadcaster and a professor of creative writing...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 August 1959
time going-away hours
When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.
money
I never cared about money.
love children men
I never wanted children. If I'd been deeply in love with a man and he'd wanted children, it would have been difficult.
creativity
Trust your creativity.
change writing groups
I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.
art believe dark
I think every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn't bother to do it. It is a message in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It's saying, 'I'm here and I believe that you are somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime.'
art enchantment spells
Art is enchantment and artists have the right of spells.
games ties history
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
people vulnerable prepared
As a writer, if you're prepared to work from your own wound, you're allowing people into the most vulnerable parts of yourself.
effort impossible
Only the impossible is worth the effort.
two people rooms
One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.
boxing leaving stories
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.
book bridges people
We're in a strange situation where people either don't read at all or they read a lot. There's a huge gap in between. That's something that would be good to bridge so it doesn't have to be one thing or the other. Books could be part of life in a more relaxed way. I'd like to see that.
love stars secret
The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself. When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. Its a reference point, not an end in itself, even though you seem to be following it. So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself. The end of all your exploring will be to cease from exploration and know the place for the first time.