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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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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
Short
Withdraw
Hold
Timid
Keep
Reserve
Back
Resource
Best
Reserves
Self
Supply
Life
Selfish
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The key to happiness ... is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.
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When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.
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I walked out to brood on this life of ours, which seems from birth to death to be a steady loss, disguised by sudden gains and happiness, which persuade us of good fortune, when all the while the glass is emptying.
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Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
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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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Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision.
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Know thyself,’ said Socrates. Know thyself,’ said Sappho, ‘and make sure that the Church never finds out.
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I hate the word lesbian it tells you nothing its only purpose is to inflame.
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I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
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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.
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No emotion is the final one.
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Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don't give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it.
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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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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?
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Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.
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I would rather have regrets of excess than regrets of denial.
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Stories end in reverie, tragedy, or forgiveness.
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Cheating is easy. There's no swank to infidelity. To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that taking but when you open them there's nothing there.
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