Quote

Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

Jeanette Winterson

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Jeanette Winterson
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: August 27
Author
Film Producer
Journalist
Novelist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
Manchester
England
Hear
Create
Voice
Able
Knack
Need
Bedtime
Needs
Voices
Writers
Listening

More quotes by Jeanette Winterson

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It is a true saying, that what you fear you find.
Jeanette Winterson
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A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it?
Jeanette Winterson
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Y'know, Nature's unpredictable -- that's why we had to tame her. Maybe we went too far, but in principle we made the right decision.
Jeanette Winterson
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If art, all art, is concerned with truth, then a society in denial will not find much use for it.
Jeanette Winterson
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Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the letter you were writing? How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?
Jeanette Winterson
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Our broken society is not born out of the triumph of the individual, but out of his effacement. He vanishes, she vanishes, ask them who they are and they will offer you a wallet or a child.
Jeanette Winterson
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The only sex education my mother ever gave me was the injunction: 'Never let a boy touch you down there.' I had no idea what she meant. She seemed to be referring to my knees.
Jeanette Winterson
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Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not.
Jeanette Winterson
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They believed that if a mouse found your hair clippings and built a nest with them you got a headache. If the nest was big enough, you might go mad.
Jeanette Winterson
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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.
Jeanette Winterson
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Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.
Jeanette Winterson
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Tell me a story, Pew. What kind of story, child? A story with a happy ending. There’s no such thing in all the world. As a happy ending? As an ending.
Jeanette Winterson
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There must be some part of Man that is more than his daily round. Some part of him that will use his profit on a matter of no profit.
Jeanette Winterson
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I've never been tempted by God but I like his trappings.
Jeanette Winterson
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Know thyself,’ said Socrates. Know thyself,’ said Sappho, ‘and make sure that the Church never finds out.
Jeanette Winterson
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I think every work of art is an act of faith, or we wouldn't bother to do it. It is a message in a bottle, a shout in the dark. It's saying, 'I'm here and I believe that you are somewhere and that you will answer if necessary across time, not necessarily in my lifetime.'
Jeanette Winterson
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The key to happiness ... is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.
Jeanette Winterson
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When a woman gives birth her waters break and she pours out the child and the child runs free.
Jeanette Winterson
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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.
Jeanette Winterson
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The ancients believed in fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.
Jeanette Winterson