“The library was quiet. It was busy but it was quiet and I thought it must be like this in a monastery… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“When I had no books and had to learn everything I needed off by heart, and when I had to hide what… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world. — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“The more I read, the more I felt connected across time to other lives and deeper sympathies. I felt less isolated. I… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Quoting her mother: The trouble with a book is you never know what's in it until it's too late! — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
There's a whole generation growing up thinking you shouldn't seek knowledge for its own sake, and that theatre and art and books… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Six books… my mother didn’t want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
We have a generation of kids who may never see a bookshelf or never see books in houses. What are they going… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“Reading's not a luxury, art's not a luxury. It's about your soul, and it's about yourself. And if reading is a luxury,… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Some people are happy when they are at the sea; I'm happy when I'm standing in front of a shelf of books.… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“My mother was in charge of language. My father had never really learned to read - he could manage slowly, with his… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“A book is a magic carpet that flies you off somewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through.… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed. — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby.… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what's crushing you. — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through.” — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“I wasn’t reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through English Literature in Prose A–Z. But this was different.… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Literature offers us all, writers and readers, the best method of discovering and retelling the changing story of ourselves. The story is… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“After nine nights must come ten and every desperate meeting only leaves you desperate for another. There is never enough to eat, never enough… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so, how could we take it back… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“Yes. Just pass me my leg will you? It's on top of the wardrobe where he threw it, and I think my right arm… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
Every second the Universe divides into possibilities and most of those possibilities never happen. It is not a uni-verse -- there is more than… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“It's the cliches that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise than how should… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
What would it have meant to be happy? What would it have meant if things had been bright, clear, good between us? — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“Mrs Ratlow was a widow, and she was head of English, but she still did all the cooking and cleaning for her two sons,… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
“What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
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.… — Jeanette Winterson Copy Share Image
