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Jeanette Winterson Passages
Aug. 23rd, 2007 08:07 pmJeanette Winterson Quotations
from Written on the Body
"Dear Friend, Let me lie beside you watching the flowers until the earth covers us and we are gone." (90)
"I wanted to say something cruel to expiate my anger and to justify myself. But it's difficult with old friends; difficult because it's so easy. You have to know one another as well as lovers do and you have had less to pretend about.” (28)
“Yes we are and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn’t mind waking up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you rerad the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you, and think of you very often.
-
I don’t want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and who doesn’t bother to check her diary when we arrange to meet.” (38)
“You never give away your heart, you lend it from time to time. If this were not so how could we take it back without asking?” (38)
“I am drowning in inevitability.” (40)
“Good sense, common sense. Good dog.” (40)
“…especially when you love them.” (50)
“With a stream of superlatives… Naturally this model had to be the best, the most important, the wonderful, even the incomparable.
-
Nouns have no worth these days unless they bank with a couple of Highstreet adjectives.” (52)
“THINGS HAD CHANGED what an arsehole comment, I had changed things. Things don’t change, they’re not like seasons moving on diurnal round. People change things. There are victims of change but not victims of things. Why do I collude with the mis-use of language? I can’t make it any easier for Jacqueline however I put it. I can make it easier for me and I suppose that’s what I’m doing.” (56-7)
“Why is the nature of love loss?” (1)
“You said ‘I love you.’ Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation.” (61)
“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no.” (1)
“It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love?” (1)
“Cut to the en-suite bathroom. The lover is crying. End-scene.” (15)
“You said, ‘Why do I frighten you?’ Frighten me? Yes you do frighten me. You act as though we will be together forever. You act as though there is infinite pleasure and time without end. How can I know that? My experience has been that time always ends. In theory you are right, the quantum physicists are right, the romantics and the religious are right. In practice we both wear a watch.” (15 or 18…)
“If I rush at this relationship it’s because I fear for it. I fear you have a door I cannot see an that any minute now the door will open and you’ll be gone. Then what? Then what as I bang the walls like the Inquisition searching for a saint? Where will I find the secret passage? For me it will be just the same four walls.” (18)
from Written on the Body
"Dear Friend, Let me lie beside you watching the flowers until the earth covers us and we are gone." (90)
"I wanted to say something cruel to expiate my anger and to justify myself. But it's difficult with old friends; difficult because it's so easy. You have to know one another as well as lovers do and you have had less to pretend about.” (28)
“Yes we are and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn’t mind waking up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you rerad the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you, and think of you very often.
-
I don’t want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and who doesn’t bother to check her diary when we arrange to meet.” (38)
“You never give away your heart, you lend it from time to time. If this were not so how could we take it back without asking?” (38)
“I am drowning in inevitability.” (40)
“Good sense, common sense. Good dog.” (40)
“…especially when you love them.” (50)
“With a stream of superlatives… Naturally this model had to be the best, the most important, the wonderful, even the incomparable.
-
Nouns have no worth these days unless they bank with a couple of Highstreet adjectives.” (52)
“THINGS HAD CHANGED what an arsehole comment, I had changed things. Things don’t change, they’re not like seasons moving on diurnal round. People change things. There are victims of change but not victims of things. Why do I collude with the mis-use of language? I can’t make it any easier for Jacqueline however I put it. I can make it easier for me and I suppose that’s what I’m doing.” (56-7)
“Why is the nature of love loss?” (1)
“You said ‘I love you.’ Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation.” (61)
“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no.” (1)
“It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love?” (1)
“Cut to the en-suite bathroom. The lover is crying. End-scene.” (15)
“You said, ‘Why do I frighten you?’ Frighten me? Yes you do frighten me. You act as though we will be together forever. You act as though there is infinite pleasure and time without end. How can I know that? My experience has been that time always ends. In theory you are right, the quantum physicists are right, the romantics and the religious are right. In practice we both wear a watch.” (15 or 18…)
“If I rush at this relationship it’s because I fear for it. I fear you have a door I cannot see an that any minute now the door will open and you’ll be gone. Then what? Then what as I bang the walls like the Inquisition searching for a saint? Where will I find the secret passage? For me it will be just the same four walls.” (18)
