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
creativity talking voice
I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create. Just on the other side of creativity is the nuthouse - and I often notice people looking at me strangely when I am talking out loud, but there is no other way.
suicide trying together
I know from my own experience that suicide is not what it seems. Too easy to try to piece together the fragmented life. The spirit torn in bits so that the body follows.
character important fiction
It is important not to force a character into something. Fiction writers can be too controlling - usually that's a terror of our own unconscious processes.
effort impossible
Only the impossible is worth the effort.
comfort purpose may
It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.
money
I never cared about money.
wish three hundred
Make three wishes and they shall all come true. Make three hundred and I will honour every one
loss grieving love-loss
Why is the measure of love loss?
voice heard
There are voices and they must be heard.
player today passing
Time is a player. Time is part of today, not simply a measure of its passing.
regret mistake errors
When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.
names arms firsts
You were in my arms for the first time, and you said my name, 'Tristan.' I answered you: 'Isolde.' Isolde. The world became a word.
hate purpose i-hate
I hate the word lesbian; it tells you nothing; its only purpose is to inflame.
communication gun alaska
The key to happiness, she said, is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.' `What if those who do not do as you do are gunning you down?' I said.... Alaska frowned. `Guns are intolerant. Guns are a failure of communication.