Quote

Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?

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
Come
Doors
Right
Magic
Steps
Dangerous
Flies
Open
Carpet
Stories
Elsewhere
Back
Door
Book
Step

More quotes by Jeanette Winterson

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As people get older they have these rigid patterns that they impose on themselves, and it kills them. They become dull, they become dead to new experience, they become afraid, biased, and bigoted. It's really simply to do with refusing new experience.
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I have a head for heights it's true, but no stomach for the depths. Strange then to have plumbed so many.
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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.'
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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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Capitalism is like Japanese Knotweed: nothing kills it off. If there were only two people left on the planet, one of them would find a way of making money out of the other.
Jeanette Winterson
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Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.
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Creativity is on the side of health - it isn't the thing that drives us mad it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.
Jeanette Winterson
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Fragile creatures of a small blue planet, surrounded by light years of silent space.
Jeanette Winterson
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Knowing that books are something that is hidden, that almost has that alchemical quality to it. There is a secret society in here, and if you belong to it, you'll be able to transform your lead into gold. I have that rather magical sense about books - that they do, somehow, have special powers.
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Their throats were bare for God.
Jeanette Winterson
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A character has a distinctive voice - you should be able to hear them in your head and conduct a conversation with them while you're out walking. If the answers surprise you, you know it's the character speaking and not you.
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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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I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean? It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does.
Jeanette Winterson
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We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.
Jeanette Winterson
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I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.
Jeanette Winterson
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There's something about the authenticity rather than the autobiography that makes my story and my pain move across and become your story and your pain.
Jeanette Winterson
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It's not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between.
Jeanette Winterson
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I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Jeanette Winterson
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I believe in communication books communicate ideas and make bridges between people.
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