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Home
Authors
Jeanette Winterson
British
Novelist
About the author
My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Books
Many people feel their outer self isn't the whole self.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#People
#Self
London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#People
#London
Life gives you enough hard knocks so it's unlikely you'll stay that sure of yourself.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Life
Nobody knows anything about Shakespeare the person. It's all legend, it is all rumor.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Shakespeare
#Rumor
In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Books
#Journey
One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Life
#People
If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
I'm not a quitter.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Rules
I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Character
#Confusion
I wanted to cause trouble, but I know now it stays with you.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Now
#Trouble
#Cause
I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Boys
#Ambition
I think people deceive themselves about themselves, particularly as they get older.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#People
I think it would be very foolish not to take the irrational seriously.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Woman
#HusbArtist
We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Will
Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Being
#Writers
#Listening
With animal behavior, they're all fine until you introduce some rogue element into the cage, and then they go crazy.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Behavior
Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Want
#God
#Mystery
#Cosmos
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.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Time
#Work
#Day
Whatever is powerful to you can be translated into something which will matter to somebody that you will never know.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Will
Naked is the best disguise.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Disguise
What you risk reveals what you value.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Risk
#Value
To me, life, for all its privations, is a luminous thing. You have to risk it.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Life
#Risk
To create a past that seemed authentic but would be a fiction, you need an invented language.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Past
#Language
#Fiction
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?
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Wonder
#World
There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Time
#Work
#Interest
The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Home
#Danger
Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Life
#Heart
#Terror
#Metaphor
#Quest
Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Years
#Experience
What's invisible to us is also crucial for our own well-being.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Truth
#Homosexuality
I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Change
#Consciousness
You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Play
I never cared about money.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Money
I never wanted children. If I'd been deeply in love with a man and he'd wanted children, it would have been difficult.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Love
#Children
#Man
I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Life
#Being
#Open
I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Life
#People
#Work
#Being
I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Love
#Writer
#Women
#Lesbian
Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Love
#Work
#World
#Writer
#Theories
#Body
Always in my books, I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Books
Anything outside marriage seems like freedom and excitement.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Freedom
#Marriage
#Excitement
Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Art
#Self
#Innocence
#Depression
Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Truth
#Confidence
Creative work is incredibly difficult, and that is where the tests lie.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Work
#Tests
#Lie
Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Writing
#Language
#Listening
I hate the word lesbian; it tells you nothing; its only purpose is to inflame.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Nothing
#Purpose
#Word
#Hate
#Lesbian
However it is debased or misinterpreted, love is a redemptive feature. To focus on one individual so that their desires become superior to yours is a very cleansing experience.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Love
#Experience
#Focus
I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Relationships
#Men
#Women
I am not interested in genres. I am interested in doing the best work I can in whatever medium.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Work
I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#People
#Ideas
#Books
#Communication
I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Being
#School
#Mind
I don't believe in happy endings.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
I don't read reviews because by then it's too late - whatever anyone says, the book won't change. It is written.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Change
I don't understand why people talk of art as a luxury when it's a mind-altering possibility.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Talk
#People
#Art
#Luxury
#Mind
#Possibility
You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back without asking?
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Time
#Heart
I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Books
#Garden
#Cats
#Hens
If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Change
#Fiction
Your weak point is the open, vulnerable place where you can always be hurt. Love, in all its aspects, opens the self so fully.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#Love
#Hurt
#Open
#Self
My friends and the people who are close to me know what I am. And that is enough.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist
#People
#Friends
My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.
Jeanette Winterson,
British
Novelist