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. Jeanette Winterson More Quotes by Jeanette Winterson More Quotes From Jeanette Winterson Art is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar. We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother tongue. Jeanette Winterson mother art thinking Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there Jeanette Winterson body light secret The world is surely wide enough to walk without fear. Jeanette Winterson enough fear world The truth is I am inventing the maybe. I can only make the choices I make, so why torture myself with what I might have done, when all I can handle is what I have done? The Maybe Islands are hostile to human life. Jeanette Winterson choices done islands I’m not club-able, you see. I don’t like literary parties and literary gatherings and literary identities. I’d hate to join anything, however loosely. Jeanette Winterson party hate identity I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to. Jeanette Winterson women literature thinking What to say? That the end of love is a haunting. A haunting of dreams. A haunting of silence. Haunted by ghosts it is easy to become a ghost. Life ebbs. The pulse is too faint. Nothing stirs you. Some people approve of this and call it healing. It is not healing. A dead body feels no pain. Jeanette Winterson pain healing dream Memory loss is one way of coping with damage. Jeanette Winterson loss memories way In the economy of the body, the limbic highway takes precedence over the neural pathways. We were designed and built to feel, and there is no thought, no state of mind, that is not also a feeling state. Jeanette Winterson pathways mind feelings True stories are the ones that lie open at the border, allowing a crossing, a further frontier. The final frontier is just science fiction--don't believe it. Like the universe, there is no end. Jeanette Winterson borders believe lying I have no idea what happens next. Jeanette Winterson next happens ideas Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way. Jeanette Winterson unconditional-love love-is children Words like passion and ecstasy, we learn them but they stay flat on the page. Sometimes we try to turn them over, find out what's on the other side, and everyone has a story to tell os a woman or a brothel or an opium night or a war. We fear it. We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much. Jeanette Winterson passion love war To create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement. Jeanette Winterson supplements appreciate appreciation What would it have meant to be happy? What would it have meant if things had been bright, clear, good between us? Jeanette Winterson clear meant-to-be ifs We heal up through being loved, and through loving others. We don't heal by forming a secret society of one - by assessing about the only other 'one' we might admit, and being doomed to disappointment. Jeanette Winterson disappointment secret might Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative. Jeanette Winterson measurement diversity justice I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks. Jeanette Winterson historical-novels cloaks literature It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband. Jeanette Winterson helpful husband artist In the antiseptic world we try to purge ourselves of difficult things. Don't dwell on it, switch off the light and go home. But this is home. I have to be a home to myself. I am the place I come back to and I can't keep hiding difficult things in trunks. Soon the house will be full of trunks and I perched on top of them with the phone saying, "Yes, I'm fine, of course, I'm fine, everything's fine." The trunks shudder. Jeanette Winterson phones light home
