Why is it that human beings are allowed to grow up without the necessary apparatus to make sound ethical decisions?

— Jeanette Winterson

Why is the measure of love loss?

— Jeanette Winterson

Why should literature be easy? Sometimes you can do what you want to do in a simple, direct way that is absolutely right. Sometimes you can't. Reading is not a passive act. Books are not TV. Art of all kinds is an interactive challenge. The person who makes the work and the person who comes to the work both have a job to do. I am never willfully obscure, but I do ask for some effort.

— Jeanette Winterson

Wide reading is important. You don’t have to like it, but it’s important to grapple with things you don’t understand. I’ve been spending the last six months getting up an hour early to try to understand economics because I need to. I don’t want to be one of these bewildered schmucks. The things that you understand will inform your writing. The bigger your mind, the better your work is going to be. You’re not born with a big mind; you have to build it. If I don’t read for an hour a day, I get ill.

— Jeanette Winterson

Women always bring it back to the personal,' said Handsome. 'It's why you can't be world leaders.'' And men never do,' I said, 'which is why we end up with no world left to lead.

— Jeanette Winterson

Writers are not here to conform. We are here to challenge. We're not here to be comfortable—we're here, really, to shake things up. That's our job.

— Jeanette Winterson

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

You act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn’t belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you.

— Jeanette Winterson

You are a pool of clear water where the light plays

— Jeanette Winterson

You are still the color of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it’s not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?

— Jeanette Winterson