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
second-chance remember moments
It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.
laughing people needs
Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.
emotional thinking doors
There is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isn’t. When we are objective we are subjective too. When we are neutral we are involved. When we say ‘I think’ we don’t leave our emotions outside the door. To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.
hero names matter
It's true that heroes are inspiring, but mustn't 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?
heart beloved hopeless
Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.
powerful writing soul
Writing is both bomb and bomb disposal-a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing.
language hiding hiding-place
Language is a finding-place not a hiding place.
heart islands matter
Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.
stories trust-me i-can
Trust me, I'm telling you stories. ... I can change the story. I am the story.
different goes-on literature
They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?
mirrors saws firsts
When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself.
morning flower night
What kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call.
lovers self-fulfilling-prophecy
As your lover describes you, so you are.
writing goes-on
I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.