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6b1f7bd
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In the secret places of her thymus gland Louise is making too much of herself. Her faithful biology depends on regulation but the white T-cells have turned bandit. They don't obey the rules. They are swarming into the bloodstream, overturning the quiet order of spleen and intestine. In the lymph nodes they are swelling with pride. It used to be their job to keep her body safe from enemies on the outside. They were her immunity, her certaint..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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9167f45
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When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself.
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self
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Jeanette Winterson |
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ae8fbee
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I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it. And here is the shock - when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy. You are unhappy. Things get worse. ..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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54c0300
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To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run...
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Jeanette Winterson |
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61fc931
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I looked at my palms trying to see the other life, the parallel life. The point at which my selves broke away and one married a fat man and the other stayed here.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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5fccbd2
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There's no story that's the start of itself.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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c75d3fd
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In the presence of love, hearth and quest become one.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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f1ccf1d
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I don't know how to answer. I know what to think, but words in the head are like voices under water. They are distorted.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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1d48ded
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I like the way the morning can be stormy and the afternoon clear and sparkly as a jewel in the water. Put your hand in the water to reach for a sea urchin or a sea shell, and the thing desired never quite lies where you had lined it up to be. The same is true of love. In prospect or contemplation, love is where it seems to be. Reach in to lift it out and your hand misses
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Jeanette Winterson |
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ed64e3d
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The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior--benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control. 'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.' 'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed. 'Then I u..
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libraries
life
dewey-decimal
jung
filing
order
logic
librarians
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Jeanette Winterson |
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aae3625
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What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?
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life
love
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Jeanette Winterson |
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5b7bf4a
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You cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return. And the wound will take you there.
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revenge
reckoning
wounds
reconciliation
return
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Jeanette Winterson |
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cb71c52
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The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home, like all the men who now live with mermaids at the bottom of the sea.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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8113469
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Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door.
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sadness
happiness
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Jeanette Winterson |
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6e4caa9
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Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
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reading
fiction
liberation
value
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Jeanette Winterson |
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c43f710
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I can't do it. I've been here before and it's not a room with a view. The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal. If I don't withdraw I have no power at all. A relationship where one person has no power or negative power, isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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c24a240
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I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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907f369
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I have flown the distance of your body from side to side of your ivory coast. I know the forests where I can rest and feed. I have mapped you with my naked eye and stored you out of sight. The millions of cells that make up your tissues are plotted on my retina. Night flying I know exactly where I am. Your body is my landing strip.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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5f0639b
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Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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fd504e8
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I've turned myself inside out to try and avoid what happened today. You affect me in ways I can't quantify or contain. All I can measure is the effect, and the effect is that I am out of control.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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2c94a32
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There's so little wonder left in the world because we've seen everything one way or another'.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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ff81063
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I think we are worlds compressed into human form.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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5ad8231
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I remember once walking out hand in hand with a boy I knew, and it was summer, and suddenly before us was a field of gold. Gold as far as you could see. We knew we'd be rich forever. We filled our pockets and our hair. We were rolled in gold. We ran through the field laughing and our legs and feet were coated in yellow dust, so that we were like golden statues or golden gods. He kissed my feet, the boy I was with, and when he smiled, he had..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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e36841d
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It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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a78889e
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what he told himself on those sea-soaked nights...Others joined in and it was discovered that every light had a story-no, every light a story. And the flashes themselves were the stories going out over the waves, as markers and guides and comfort and warning.
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light
waves
stories
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Jeanette Winterson |
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fa4fce1
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Don't you ever think of going back?" Silly question. There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to bring you back. Mind turns to the pull, it's hard to pull away. I'm always thinking of going back. When Lot's wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt.Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it's a poor exchange for losing your self. People do go back, but they ..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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bc01f0c
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The winged word. The mercurial word. The word that is both moth and lamp. The word that is itself and more. the associative word light with meanings. The word not netted by meaning. The exact word wide. The word not whore nor cenobite. The word unlied.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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89eeffb
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Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. 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. ..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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227210b
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If I want to say no, I will, but for the right reasons. If I want to say yes, I will, but for the right reasons. Leave the consequences. Leave the finale. Leave the grand statements. The simplicity of feeling should not be taxed. I can't work out what this will cost or what either of us owe. The admission charge is never on the door, but you are open and I want to enter. Let me in. You do.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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1760484
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the past is so hard to shift. It comes with us like a chaperon, standing between us and the newness of the present - the new chance.
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present
past
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Jeanette Winterson |
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63438ab
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Singing is my pleasure, but not in church, for the parson said the gargoyles must remain on the outside, not seek room in the choir stalls. So I sing inside the mountain of my flesh, and my voice is as slender as a reed and my voice has no lard in it. When I sing the dogs sit quiet and people who pass in the night stop their jabbering and discontent and think of other times, when they were happy. And I sing of other times, when I was happy,..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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e23b73e
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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 I call it love?
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Jeanette Winterson |
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cc04dfd
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Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.
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philosophy
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Jeanette Winterson |
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d6c7fba
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We're a lukewarm people for all our feast days and hard work. Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision. Our children frighten us in their intimacy, but we make sure they grow up like us. Lukewarm like us. On a night like this, hands and faces hot, we can believe that tomorrow will show us angels in jars and that the well-known woods will suddenly reveal another p..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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498f0a4
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The human heart is my territory. I write about love because it's the most important thing in the world. I write about sex because often it feels like the most important thing in the world.
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sex
love
writting
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Jeanette Winterson |
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8a245d9
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I went outside, tripping over slabs of sunshine the size of towns. The sun was like a crowd of people, it was a party, it was music. The sun was blaring through the walls of houses and beating down the steps. The sun was drumming time into the stone. The sun was rhythming the day.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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e6c4dc3
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when the dying sun bled the blue sky orange.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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5380684
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In this life, you have to be your own hero.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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b35d660
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I wrote my way out.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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bba2b22
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I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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dcd52d7
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You said, 'Why do I frighten you?' Frighten me? Yes you do frighten me. You act as though we will be together for ever. 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.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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de0d990
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It seems obvious, doesn't it, that someone who is ignored and overlooked will expand to the point where they have to be noticed, even if the noticing is fear and disgust.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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782630c
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What is it that you contain? The Dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia. The expanding universe opening in your gut. Are your twenty-three feet of intestines loaded with stars?
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Jeanette Winterson |
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55c56b5
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My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs. Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she's do what most people do when confronted with something they don't under..
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unexpected-things
oranges-are-not-the-only-fruit
jeanette-winterson
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Jeanette Winterson |