Quote

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

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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
Strong
Burden
Intolerable
Past
Fate
Inherited
Change
Behavior
Crushed
Anything
Present
Helpless
Hard
Anyone
Recognized
Lying
Pull
Future
Believed
Enacted
Force
Patterns
Ancients

More quotes by Jeanette Winterson

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To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.
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We're living in a homogenized culture where everything is the same, and books are not a homogenized culture. They are extremely varied, and they're eccentric because they are the product of an individual mind. They are not, in any way, mediated.
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Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?
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Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.
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the power of a text is not time-bound. The words go on doing their work.
Jeanette Winterson
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Her butler opened it for her. His name was Boredom. She said, 'Boredom, fetch me a plaything.' He said 'Very good ma'am,' and putting on his white gloves so that fingerprints would not show he tapped at my heart and I thought he said his name was Love.
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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.
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You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.
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I believe in communication books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.
Jeanette Winterson
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You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?
Jeanette Winterson
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It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.
Jeanette Winterson
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In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.
Jeanette Winterson
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How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.
Jeanette Winterson
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I had huge ambition for literature. I don't see the point of doing anything if you don't have ambition for it.
Jeanette Winterson
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History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
Jeanette Winterson
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Stories end in reverie, tragedy, or forgiveness.
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.
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I hate the word lesbian it tells you nothing its only purpose is to inflame.
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Part broken - part whole, you begin again. ( from 'Why books seem shockproof against change.' THE TIMES: BOOKS)
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In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.
Jeanette Winterson