Jeanette Winterson Quotes - Page 5

Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body.

Every moment you steal from the present is a moment you've lost forever. There is only now.

Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like
mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.

Women always bring it back to the personal,' said Handsome. 'It's why you can't be world leaders.'
'And men never do,' I said, 'which is why we end up with no world left to lead.

They sounded like intestines, only on the outside, and the men in the Bible were always having them cut off and not being able to go to church. Horrid.

Atlas said, 'Must my future be so heavy?'
Hera said, 'That is your present, Atlas. Your future hardens every day, but it is not fixed.'
'How can I escape my fate?'
'You must choose your destiny.

Freud, one of the grand masters of narrative, knew that the past is not fixed in the way that linear time suggests. We can return. We can pick up what we dropped. We can mend what others broke. We can talk with the dead.

Creativity is on the side of health - it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.

I always say to people who want to write: Live life! Don't stand on the rim, don't sit on the sidelines. Make mistakes, make a mess, get it wrong. Read everything, and get out and be in life.