The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down.
— Jeanette Winterson
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?
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.
Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.
Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.
I believe in communication; books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.
I don't read reviews because by then it's too late - whatever anyone says, the book won't change. It is written.
I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.
I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.
I never cared about money.
I think people deceive themselves about themselves, particularly as they get older.
I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.
If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.
It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband.
Many people feel their outer self isn't the whole self.
My friends and the people who are close to me know what I am. And that is enough.
One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.
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?
You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play.
Always in my books, I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens.
Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.
I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.
I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.
I don't understand why people talk of art as a luxury when it's a mind-altering possibility.
I hate the word lesbian; it tells you nothing; its only purpose is to inflame.
I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.
I never wanted children. If I'd been deeply in love with a man and he'd wanted children, it would have been difficult.
I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.
I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.
If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you.
Life gives you enough hard knocks so it's unlikely you'll stay that sure of yourself.
My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.
Naked is the best disguise.
Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places.
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.
I think it would be very foolish not to take the irrational seriously.
Anything outside marriage seems like freedom and excitement.
Creative work is incredibly difficult, and that is where the tests lie.
I am not interested in genres. I am interested in doing the best work I can in whatever medium.
I don't believe in happy endings.
I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.
I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.
I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.
I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I wanted to cause trouble, but I know now it stays with you.
I'm not a quitter.
In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.
London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.
My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.
Nobody knows anything about Shakespeare the person. It's all legend, it is all rumor.
