Quotes By Jeanette Winterson

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

However it is debased or misinterpreted, love is a redemptive feature. To focus on one individual so that their desires become superior to yours is a very cleansing experience.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.

I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

Your weak point is the open, vulnerable place where you can always be hurt. Love, in all its aspects, opens the self so fully.

I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.

I never cared about money.

One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.

I don't read reviews because by then it's too late - whatever anyone says, the book won't change. It is written.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband.

Naked is the best disguise.

Whatever is powerful to you can be translated into something which will matter to somebody that you will never know.

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

What you risk reveals what you value.

Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places.

My friends and the people who are close to me know what I am. And that is enough.

Life gives you enough hard knocks so it's unlikely you'll stay that sure of yourself.

I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.

I'm not a quitter.

Whether you want to call it God or the mystery of the cosmos doesn't matter to me.

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.

I don't believe in happy endings.

What's invisible to us is also crucial for our own well-being.

I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.