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Written on the Body QUOTES

Written on the Body QUOTES

1 " You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to? "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

2 " Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

3 " 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. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

4 " Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

5 " Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

6 " Sometimes I think of you and I feel giddy. Memory makes me lightheaded, drunk on champagne. All the things we did. And if anyone has said this was the price I would have agreed to pay it. That surprises me; that with the hurt and the mess comes a shift of recognition. It was worth it. Love is worth it. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

7 " Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

8 " What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning? "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

9 " You are a pool of clear water where the light plays "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

10 " 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 recognise 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 , Written on the Body

11 " Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

12 " She arches her body like a cat on a stretch. She nuzzles her cunt into my face like a filly at the gate. She smells of the sea. She smells of rockpools when I was a child. She keeps a starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She's refilled each day with fresh tides of longing. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

13 " You have a dress with a décolletage to emphasise your breasts. I suppose the cleavage is the proper focus but what I wanted to do was to fasten my index finger and thumb at the bolts of your collar bone, push out, spreading the web of my hand until it caught against your throat. You asked me if I wanted to strangle you. No, I wanted to fit you, not just in the obvious ways but in so many indentations. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

14 " Destiny is a worrying concept. I don't want to be fated, I want to choose. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

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

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

16 " Misery is a no U-turns, no stopping road. Travel down it pushed by those behind, tripped by those in front. Travel down it at furious speed though the days are mummified in lead. It happens so fast once you get started, there’s no anchor from the real world to slow you down, nothing to hold on to. Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall. Whatever your private hell, you’ll find millions like it in Misery. This is the town where everyone’s nightmares come true. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

17 " When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.
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When I say 'I will be true to you' I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

18 " There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

19 " 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 Socrates? Since factory farming is tougher on pigs than it is on philosophers I'll take a chance. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body

20 " What you risk reveals what you value. "

― Jeanette Winterson , Written on the Body