Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson, OBEis an award-winning English writer, who became famous with her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against conventional values. Some of her other novels have explored gender polarities and sexual identity. Winterson is also a broadcaster and a professor of creative writing...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 August 1959
heart beloved hopeless
Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.
laughing people needs
Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.
mind library culture
When we say we can pull resources away from libraries, from culture, from those parts of the education system that are not about utility, what we are really saying is that the life of the mind is unnecessary.
past reality hands
The Hopi, an Indian tribe, have a language as sophisticated as ours, but no tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist. What does this say about time? Matter, that thing the most solid and the well-known, which you are holding in your hands and which makes up your body, is now known to be mostly empty space. Empty space and points of light. What does this say about the reality of the world?
ifs i-can
If I can't stay where I am, and I can't, then I will put all that I can into the going.
Life was a pre-death experience.
political world duty
I am getting much more political as I get older. It's the duty of any writer, in particular, not to stand back from the world.
guarantees boat conviction
She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it.
art real rebellion
The rebellion of art is a daily rebellion against the state of living death routinely called real life.
war courage-to-love ifs
If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.
fighting men law
If you don't educate people well, then you're going to have a lot of violent, angry young men and women. You can go around saying they're all so violent, just throw them in jail, this is an underclass, what can you do? You can create fear. The issue of violence is very suitable for a repressive society. Then you can have more legislation, more police, more laws to fight crime, when all you need to do is to encourage people in a different way.
hero this-life
In this life, you have to be your own hero.
hero names matter
It's true that heroes are inspiring, but mustn't they also do some rescuing if they are to be worthy of their name? Would Wonder Woman matter if she only sent commiserating telegrams to the distressed?
children blow talking
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.