Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

I say I’m in love with her. What does that mean?
It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. Like genius, she is ignorant of what she does.

To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.

I used to believe that love was the highest value.  I still believe that love is the highest value.  I don't expect to be happy.  I don't imagine that I will find love, whatever that means, or that if I do find it, it will make me happy.  I don't think of love as the answer or the solution.  I think of love as a force of nature - as strong as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming, as drought-making as it is life-giving.  And when it burns out, the planet dies.

My little orbit of life circles love.  I daren't get any closer.  I'm not a mystic seeking final communion.  I don't go out without SPF 15.  I protect myself.

But today, when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions.  What I remember is love - all love - love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe.

This is not a love story, but love is in it.  That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.

You must never doubt the one you love.
But they might not be telling you the truth.
Never mind that. You tell them the truth.
What do you mean?
You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own.
So what should I say?
When?
When I love someone?
You should say it.

The light was as intense as a love affair.  I was blinded, delighted, not just because it was warm and wonderful, but because nature measures nothing.  Nobody needs this much sunlight.  Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is as extravagant as a world can be.  We are the ones obsessed by measurement.  The world just pours it out.

Love is not part of natural selection.
Where did love begin?  What human being looked at another and saw in their face the forests and the sea?  Was there a day, exhausted and weary, dragging home food, arms cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and, not knowing what you did, picked them because I love you?

Darwin said something to me once for which I was grateful.  I had been trying to forget, trying to stop my mind reaching for a place where it can never home.  He said, 'Nothing can be forgotten.  Nothing can be lost.  The universe itself is one vast memory system.  Look back and you will find the beginnings of the world.'