1,104 Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

Great control and great discipline are necessary when you reach your own editing stage of the book, but in the early stages you have to be prepared to let anything happen and to get it wrong or go off track. The development of a character is not smooth or simple - it is as tricky as meeting someone new whom you would like to know better.

Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun. When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in bewilderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me. And when I had looked at myself and grown accustomed to who I was, I was not afraid to hate parts of me because I wanted to be worthy of the mirror bearer.

We have a generation of kids who may never see a bookshelf or never see books in houses. What are they going to think about books? How will books become meaningful in their lives except as yet another form of digitalized content? A book is not just digitalized content.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.

London is a small place, and it is very incestuous. People know where you live. Everybody is sort of on top of each other.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

..to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.