Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.

— Jeanette Winterson

Every journey conceals another journey within its lines; the path not taken and the forgotten angle. These are the journeys I wish to record. Not the ones I made, but the ones I might have made, or perhaps did make in some other place or time.

— Jeanette Winterson

Every moment you steal from the present is a moment you've lost forever. There is only now.

— Jeanette Winterson

Everyone’s talking about the death and disappearance of the book as a format and an object. I don’t think that will happen. I think whatever happens, we have to figure out a way to protect our imaginations. Stories and poetry do that. You need a language in this world. People want words, they want to hear their situation in language, and find a way to talk about it. It allows you to find a language to talk about your own pain. If you give kids a language, they can use it. I think that’s what these educators fear. If you really educate these kids, they aren’t going to punch you in the face, they are going to challenge you with your own language.

— Jeanette Winterson

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently

— Jeanette Winterson

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently.

— Jeanette Winterson

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.

— Jeanette Winterson

Examine this statement: ‘A woman cannot be a poet.’ Dr Samuel Johnson (Englishman 1709-84 Occupation: Language Fixer and Big Mouth.) What then shall I give up? My poetry or my womanhood?

— Jeanette Winterson

Explore me,' you said, and I collected my ropes, flasks and maps, expecting to be back home soon. I dropped into the mass of you and I cannot find the way out. Sometimes I think I’m free, coughed up like Jonah from the whale, but then I turn a corner and recognize myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know.

— Jeanette Winterson

Fall for me, as an apple falls, as rain falls, because you must. Use gravity to anchor your desire.

— Jeanette Winterson