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
book reflection years
Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.
love pain pregnancy
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?
dog falling-in-love book
Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.
death believe mind
The mind will not believe in death, perhaps because, as far as the mind is concerned, death never happens.
people levels status-quo
If people aren't educated, they can't question. If they can't question, they can't change anything, which is great for the status quo and all the people who can question them at their own level.
expression glasses break-out
Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.
hearing privilege stories
We are told not to privilege one story above another. All the stories must be told. Well, maybe that's true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.
art thinking differences
Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.
book reading eye
Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.
baby book reading
The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story – of course that is how we all live, it’s the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It’s like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It’s like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you – and it can’t, and it shouldn’t, because something is missing.
moving book reading
I love the apparent quiet of reading a book. You sit there; you're not really moving. It looks very solitary. It looks very boring, but actually it's the most exciting place because it's going on for you, and you're in that relationship. In that sense, it's like being with a lover. Nobody else can intrude on that space. It's the two of you. It's your own world.
book reading empowering
The best language is always found in books because it's considered. It's a high language. Sometimes, it is complex and difficult. It's empowering and offers a way to speak about yourself that you don't have if all you are doing is reading the newspaper and watching TV.
book reading doors
Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.
best british-novelist interested work
I am not interested in genres. I am interested in doing the best work I can in whatever medium.