1,104 Quotes by Jeanette Winterson

Writers are not here to conform. We are here to challenge. We're not here to be comfortable—we're here, really, to shake things up. That's our job.

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.

I asked my mother why we couldn’t have books and she said, ‘The trouble with a book is that you never know what’s in it until it’s too late.'I thought to myself, 'Too late for what?

Everyone remembers things which never happened. And it is common knowledge that people often forget things which did. Either we are all fantasists and liars or the past has nothing definite in it.

At my most precarious, I balanced on a book, and the books rafted me over the tides of feelings that left me soaked and shattered.

Reading is a life-long collision with minds not like your own.

I always say to people who want to write: Live life! Don't stand on the rim, don't sit on the sidelines. Make mistakes, make a mess, get it wrong. Read everything, and get out and be in life.

If the universe is movement, it will not be in one direction only. We think of our lives as linear but it is the spin of the earth that allows us to observe time. Walk with me.

Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.