1,104 Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

Christmas is about community, collaboration, celebration. Done right, Christmas can be an antidote to the Me First mentality that has rebranded capitalism as neo-liberalism. The shopping mall isn’t our true home, nor is it a public space, though, as libraries, parks, playgrounds, museums and sports facilities disappear, for many the fake friendliness of the mall is the only public space left, apart from the streets.

My mother had painted the white roses red and now she claimed they grew that way.

Humans will be like decayed gentry. We’ll have the glorious mansion called the past that is falling into disrepair. We’ll have a piece of land that we didn’t look after very well called the planet. And we’ll have some nice clothes and a lot of stories. We’ll be fading aristocracy. We’ll be Blanche Dubois in a moth-eaten silk dress. We’ll be Marie Antionette with no cake.

It is silence that most needs an answering – when I can no longer speak, hear me.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you’ll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

Ne sachant quoi lire ni dans quel ordre, j’ai suivi l’alphabet. Dieu merci, elle s’appelait Austen...

I can’t be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I’m not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion? She says he can. Then he should.

We always think the thing we need to transform everything – the miracle – is elsewhere, but often it is right next to us. Sometimes it is us, ourselves.

That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.