Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

Tell me the story...
What story, child?
The story of Babel Dark's secret.
It was a woman.
You always say that.
There's always a woman somewhere, child; a princess, a witch, a stepmother, a mermaid, a fairy godmother, or one as wicked as she is beautiful, or as beautiful as she is good.
Is that the complete list?
Then there is the woman you love.
Who's she?
That's another story.

T ell me a story...
What kind of story, child?
A story with a happy ending.
There's no such thing in all the world.
As a happy ending?
As an ending.

A child born of chance might imagine that Chance was its father, in the way that gods fathered children, and then abandoned them, without a backward glance, but with one small gift. I wondered if a gift had been left for me. I had no idea where to look, or what I was looking for, but I know now that all the important journeys start that way.

'Why can't you just tell.me the story without starting with another story?'
'Because there's no story that's the start of itself, any more than a child comes into the world without parents.'

A beginning, a middle and an end is the proper way to tell a story. But I have difficulty with that method.

She hated saying yes.  She was of those people for whom yes is always an admission of guilt or failure.  No was power.

I say only, but what does that mean?

It was a long story, and like most of the stories in the world, never finished. There was an ending - there always is - but the story went on past the ending - it always does.

We are lucky, even the worst of us, because daylight comes.

'You're not like other children,' said my mother. 'And if you can't survive in this world, you had better make a world of your own.'
The eccentricities she described as mine were really her own. She was the one who hated going out. She was the one who couldn't live in the world she had been given. She longed for me to be free, and did everything she could to make sure it never happened.