Fuck yeah, Jeanette Winterson!

In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun.

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

Over the next few weeks we wooed each other in fonts and pixels - an email courtship that couldn't be happening, I thought, because Susie was heterosexual and I have given up missionary work with heterosexual women. But something was going on and I had no idea what to do about it. I had lunch with my friend, the writer Ali Smith. She said, 'Just kiss her.' Susie went to talk to her daughter in New York. Lianna said, 'Just kiss her, Mummy.' So we did.

- Jeanette Winterson, "Why be happy when you could be normal?"

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

- Jeanette Winterson, "Why be happy when you could be normal?"

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

People were the problem. How do you love another person? How do you trust another person to love you? I had no idea. I thought that love was loss. Why is the measure of love loss? That was the opening line of a novel of mine - Written on the Body (1992). I was stalking love, trapping love, losing love, longing for love.

- Jeanette Winterson, "Why be happy when you could be normal?"

[booklat]

This is random: Painting book covers

This book cover fascinates me because I feel the people staring at me (probably thinking I’m a bit of a perv) when I read it in public places. It’s mysterious and sexy and intriguing, and the book is by Winterson, so it’s quite perfect. Spent this rainy day trying to paint it.

Posted by rainbowramareads

P.S. This is a new section, if you want to share something book/reading related, or if you’re feeling rebellious and just really, really want to make a post but it’s not that “day” yet. Hello to all the new members/followers! :)

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

What is desire? Desire is a restaurant. Desire is watching you eat. Desire is pouring wine for you. Desire is looking at the menu and wondering what it would be like to kiss you. Desire is the surprise of your skin. Look - in between us now are the props of ordinary life - glasses, knives, cloths, Time has been here before. History has had you - and me too. My hand has brushed against yours for centuries. The props change, but not this. Not this single naked wanting you.

- Jeanette Winterson, The White Room

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

"Love without thought. Love without conditions. Love without promises. Love without threats. Love without fear. Love without limits. Love without end. I think she did love me, for a minute, for a second, for the time it takes to remember, for the time it takes to forget. We had twenty-eight days together and then I was gone."

- Jeanette Winterson, "The Stone Gods"

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

"We are nothing, and we are everything. Look up -- every star another world, but what I seek, near or far, is love's outline in your face."

- Jeanette Winterson, "The Stone Gods"

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

"We made love by our fire, watching the snow shape the entrance to the cave. When I touch her, my fingers don't question what she is. My body knows who she is. The strange thing about strangers is that they are unknown and known. There is a pattern to her, a shape I understand, a private geometry that numbers mine. She is a maze where I got lost years ago, and now find the way out. She is the missing map. She is the place that I am."

- Jeanette Winterson, "The Stone Gods"

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

"Love is an experiment," she said. "What happens next is always surprising."

- Jeanette Winterson, "The Stone Gods"

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

Gut Symmetries is my favorite.

What's your favorite quote off it?

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

We love the habits of love. The way you wear your hair. The way you drink your coffee. The way you turn your back on me in the mornings so that I will shift to fit myself round you. The way you open the door when you see me coming home. When I leave I look up at the window and I know you will be watching me, watching over me go. And at the same time love needs to be new every day. The fresh damp risen-up feel of love.

- Jeanette Winterson, All I Know About Gertrude Stein

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

What is your favourite Winterson book?

Written on the Body always has my heart.What's yours? :)

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

I met my lover two years ago and I fell in love. I fell like a stray star caught in the orbit of Venus. Love had me. Love held me. Love like wrist-cords. Love like a voice from a long way off. I love your voice on the phone.

Jeanette Winterson, All I Know About Gertrude Stein

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

I find myself returning again and again to the same familiar condition of solitariness. Is it sex that makes this happen? If it were not for sex, wouldn’t we each be content with our friends, their companionship and confidences? I love my friends. I am a good friend. But with my lover I begin to feel alone. A friend of mine can be happy without a lover; she will have an affair if she wants one, but she doesn’t take the trouble to love. I do very badly without a lover. I pine, I sigh, I sleep, I dream, I set the table for two and stare into the empty chair. I could invite a friend – sometimes I do – but that is not the point; the point is that I am always wondering where you are even when you don’t exist. Sometimes I have affairs. But though I enjoy the bed, I feel angry at the fraud; the closeness without the cost. I know what the cost is: the more I love you, the more I feel alone.

- Jeanette Winterson, All I Know About Gertrude Stein

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

Contentment is a feeling you say? Are you sure it's not an absence of feeling?

- Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

I looked back at you. These moments that are talisman and treasure. Cumulative deposits -- our fossil record -- and the beginnings of what happens next. They are the beginning of a story, and the story we will always tell.

- Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

[fuckyeahjeanettewinterson]

I don't expect to be happy. I don't imagine that I will find love, whatever that means, or that if I do find it, it will make me happy. I don't think of love as the answer or the solution. I think of love as a force of nature -- as strong as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible

- Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping