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The only selfish life is a timid one.

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
Timid
Selfish
Life

More quotes by Jeanette Winterson

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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.
Jeanette Winterson
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I felt like a thief with a bagful of stolen glances.
Jeanette Winterson
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Don't regret your life, child, it will pass soon enough.
Jeanette Winterson
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I used to think marriage was a plate-glass window just begging for a brick.
Jeanette Winterson
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Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.
Jeanette Winterson
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This is a quantum universe ... neither random nor determined. It is potential at every second. All you can do is intervene.
Jeanette Winterson
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She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.
Jeanette Winterson
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I keep myself locked as a box when it matters, and broken open when it doesn't matter at all.
Jeanette Winterson
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Names are still magic even Sharon, Karen, Darren, and Warren are magic to somebody somewhere. In fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.
Jeanette Winterson
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Working-class families in the north of England used to hear the 1611 Bible regularly at church and at home ... for us, the language didn't seem too difficult. I especially liked 'the quick and the dead' - you really get a feel for the difference if you live in a house with mice and a mousetrap.
Jeanette Winterson
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How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are?
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 rebellion of art is a daily rebellion against the state of living death routinely called real life.
Jeanette Winterson
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Six books… my mother didn’t want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books – that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.
Jeanette Winterson
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I don't own my emotions unless I can think about them. I am not afraid of feeling but I am afraid of feeling unthinkingly. I don't want to drown. My head is my heart's lifebelt.
Jeanette Winterson
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Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.
Jeanette Winterson
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Do you fall in love often? Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.
Jeanette Winterson
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When pieces of work speak to us in a way that feels as if they were made just for us, those become our private worlds that we return to.
Jeanette Winterson
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A homosexual is further away from a woman than a rhinoceros.
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