Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Like
Resources
Short
Withdraw
Hold
Timid
Keep
Reserve
Back
Resource
Best
Reserves
Self
Supply
Life
Selfish

More quotes by Jeanette Winterson

Image
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
Image
Why is the measure of love loss?
Jeanette Winterson
Image
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
Image
Their throats were bare for God.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
Perhaps all romance is like that not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
Even death after a long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. ... Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today?
Jeanette Winterson
Image
Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?
Jeanette Winterson
Image
Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
I fell into the books, and left myself there for safekeeping.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
I hate the word lesbian it tells you nothing its only purpose is to inflame.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
I don't see myself as some kind of lone figure standing out there and doing my work in solitary splendour, but as part of the human condition and part of the continuum of writers.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
It's the cliches that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
Only a fool tries to reconstruct a bunch of grapes from a bottle of wine.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun. This place will warm me, feed me and care for me. I will hold on to this pulse against other rhythms. The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
There are those who say that temptation can be barricaded beyond the door. The ones who think that stray desires can be driven out of the heart like the moneychangers from the temple. Maybe they can, if you patrol your weak points day and night, don't look, don't smell, don't dream.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
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.
Jeanette Winterson
Image
When a woman gives birth her waters break and she pours out the child and the child runs free.
Jeanette Winterson