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7b61b1c
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The only selfish life is a timid one.
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jeanette winterson |
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9138dec
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Every new beginning prompts a return.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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2164ba2
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I read in a book that the stars can take you anywhere. I've never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helmets. If I were up there on the moon, or by the Milky Way, I'd want to feel the stars round my head. I'd want my whole body to feel the space, the empty space and points of light. That's how dancers must feel, dancers and acrobats, just for a second, that freedom.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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d2baedd
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In therapy, the therapist acts as a container for what we daren't let out, because it is so scary, or what lets itself out every so often, and lays waste to our lives.
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therapy
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Jeanette Winterson |
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9fa17df
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When I was born I became the visible corner of a folded map. The map has more than one route. More than one destination. The map that is the unfolding self is not exactly leading anywhere. The arrow that says YOU ARE HERE is your first coordinate. There is a lot that you can't change when you are a kid. But you can pack for the journey . . .
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pursuit-of-happiness
map
life-journey
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Jeanette Winterson |
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ad71cf9
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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.
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women
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Jeanette Winterson |
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7dd3b38
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Don't mix your heart with your liver.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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fdd6fa8
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Six books... my mother didn't want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books - that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.
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reading
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Jeanette Winterson |
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8e38c3a
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I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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a07c838
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The stories we sit up late to hear are love stories. It seems that we cannot know enough about this riddle of our lives. We go back and back to the same scenes, the same words, trying to scrape out the meaning. Nothing could be more familiar than love. Nothing else eludes us so completely.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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96f2176
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To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language...
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words
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Jeanette Winterson |
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55405c7
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Happiness was still on the other side of a glass door, but at least she could see it through the glass, like a prisoner being visited by a longed-for loved one.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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d0fcce7
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I knew clearly that I could not rebuild my life or put it back together in any way. I had no idea what might lie on the other side of this place. I only knew that the before-world was gone forever.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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cc80ec1
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i realize that the future, though invisible, has weight. We are in the gravitational pull of past and future. It takes huge energy -speed of light power- to break the gravitational pull. How many of us ever get free of our orbit? We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives. We believe we can be our own miracles, and just a lottery win or Mr.right will make the world new.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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d4d3165
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So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful..
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literature
reading
poetry
inspiration
philosophy
finding-meaning
tough-life
solace
healing
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Jeanette Winterson |
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7acabda
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The fatal combination of indulgence without feeling disgusts me. Strange to be both greedy and dead. For myself, I prefer to hold my desires just out of reach of appetite, to keep myself honed and sharp. I want the keen edge of longing. it is so easy to be a brute and yet it has become rather fashionable. Is that the consequence of leaving your body to science? Of assuming that another pill, another drug, another car, another pocket-sized h..
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Jeanette Winterson |
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3f0d57d
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She was fragile, gentle, wide awake in a sleeping world.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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46c6c91
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I am civilised. My feelings are not.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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9a7ff65
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I don't want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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04f4d9c
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She said she'd often wondered why she wanted to do some things and not do other things at all. Well, it was obvious with some things, but for others, there was no reason there. She'd spent a long time puzzling it out, then she thought that what you'd done in a past life you didn't need to do again, and what you had to do in the future, you wouldn't be ready to do now.
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life
lesbian
reincarnation
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Jeanette Winterson |
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f4b79af
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Love is an intervention. Why do we not choose it?" (205)"
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Jeanette Winterson |
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70ef7f1
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Bigger questions, questions with more than one answer, questions without an answer are the hardest to cope with in silence. Once asked they do not evaporate and leave the mind to its serener musings. Once asked they gain dimension and texture, trip you on the stairs, wake you at night-time. A black hole sucks up its surroundings and even light never escapes. Better then to ask no questions? Better then to be a contented pig than an unhappy ..
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philosophy
questions
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Jeanette Winterson |
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f390603
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The healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy. Fighting to keep language, language became my sanity and my strength. It still is, and I know of no pain that art cannot assuage. For some, music, for some, pictures, for me, primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or in prose, cuts through noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, and then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds need to be taught to heal themselves.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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dc9e770
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Human beings often display emotions they do not feel. And they often feel emotions they do not display.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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4a53d02
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Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there. That gnaws away at the night-time hours desperate for a sign and appears at breakfast so self-composed. That longs for certainty, fidelity, compassion, and plays roulette with anything precious.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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19b9837
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When Jordan was a baby he sat on top of me much as a fly rests on a hill of dung. And I nourished him as a hill of dung nourishes a fly, and when he had eaten his fill he left me. Jordan... I should have named him after a stagnant pond and then I could have kept him, but I named him after a river and in the flood-tide he slipped away.
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rivers
mothers
children
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Jeanette Winterson |
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f5a3942
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I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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20292ba
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It's the cliches that cause the trouble.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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96c434d
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That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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3f5cd0f
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How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are?
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Jeanette Winterson |
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0898ba6
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Words like passion and ecstasy, we learn them but they stay flat on the page. Sometimes we try to turn them over, find out what's on the other side, and everyone has a story to tell os a woman or a brothel or an opium night or a war. We fear it. We fear passion and laugh at too much love and those who love too much.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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0d6feec
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I don't know which is worse: to be wrongfully accused or mistakenly understood.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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0d00676
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We heal up through being loved, and through loving others. We don't heal by forming a secret society of one - by assessing about the only other 'one' we might admit, and being doomed to disappointment.
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pain
love
oneness
healing
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Jeanette Winterson |
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2b178ca
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Love is vivid. I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. I never shied away from love's hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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4b1cd4d
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When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. ... So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself.
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navigation
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Jeanette Winterson |
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386f214
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Can I? Can I speak my mind or am I dumb inside a borrowed language, captive of bastard thoughts? What of me is mine?
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Jeanette Winterson |
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c24cd83
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He scarred her arm...but she did not care because she loved him and she knew that love leaves a wound that leaves a scar.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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3c3c00b
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If the demons lie within they travel with you. Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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1056383
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I know from my own experience that suicide is not what it seems. Too easy to try to piece together the fragmented life. The spirit torn in bits so that the body follows.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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d304049
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What I want does exist if I dare to find it.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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83e67d7
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how easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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8cbf7c7
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In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at until you understood them, they couldn't change halfway through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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83fc366
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I was angry. Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.
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Jeanette Winterson |
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9570988
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The heart is so easily mocked, believing that the sun can rise twice or that roses bloom because we want them to.
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Jeanette Winterson |