Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

Read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact.

Truth is what is left out as well as what is included. As a writer you work constantly to select and reject material. Memory works in the same way but with a different purpose. We are time travellers in our own lives.

was hardly fair of her but she never was particularly fair; she loved and she hated,

‘You’ll never marry,’ she said, ‘not you, and you’ll never be still.’ She didn’t take any money for the peas, and she told me to run home fast. I ran and ran, trying to understand what she meant.

Once upon a time there was a brilliant and beautiful princess, so sensitive that the death of a moth could distress her for weeks on end. Her family knew of no solution. Advisers wrung their hands, sages shook their heads, brave kings left unsatisfied. So it happened for many years, until one day, out walking in the forest, the princess came to the hut of an old hunchback who knew the secrets of magic. This ancient creature perceived in the princess a woman of great energy and resourcefulness.

It could only be truly realized in the next world, but we had a sense of it, a maddening, impossible sense, which was both a blessing and a curse.

must exist,’ insisted the prince, ‘because I want it.’

The search for perfection, she had told him, was in fact the search for balance, for harmony. And she showed him Libra, the scales, and Pisces, the fish, and last of all put out her two hands. ‘Here is the clue,’ she said. ‘Here in this first and personal balance.’

Other men I knew weren’t much better. The man who ran the post office was bald and shiny with hands too fat for the sweet jars. He called me poppet, which my mother said was nice. He gave me sweets too, which was an improvement.

That day I had almost strangled my dog with rage,

But I was a little girl, ergo, I was sweet, and here were sweets to prove

Everyone always said you found the right man.

There are women in the world. There are men in the world. And there are beasts. What do you do if you marry a beast?

Why had no one told me? Did that mean no one else knew? Did that mean that all over the globe, in all innocence, women were marrying beasts?

There were a lot of women, and most of them got married. If they couldn’t marry each other, and I didn’t think they could, because of having babies, some of them would inevitably have to marry beasts.

hurt me,’ I accused. ‘No I didn’t,’ he grinned. ‘It was just a bit of love.’

‘There’s what we want,’ she said, putting down a jack, ‘and there’s what we get, remember that.’

It was a good thing I was destined to become a missionary. For some time after this I put aside the problem of men and concentrated on reading the Bible. Eventually, I thought, I’ll fall in love like everybody else. Then some years later, quite by mistake, I did.

She stroked my head for a long time, and then we hugged and it felt like drowning. Then I was frightened but couldn’t stop. There was something crawling in my belly. I had an octopus inside me.

‘Do you think this is Unnatural Passion?’ I

in here, very cold. The women suffer most. Their shoulders bared and white like hard-boiled eggs. Outside, under the snow, the river lies embalmed. These are the elect, and in the hall an army sleeps on straw.

TIME IS A great deadener.

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.

expensive than a fishing rod, and puts you in the path of the elements. 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.

What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?

love you almost as much as I love the Lord,’ I laughed. She looked at me, and her eyes clouded for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

love her.’ ‘Then you do not love the Lord.’ ‘Yes, I love both of them.’ ‘You cannot.’ ‘I do, I do, let me go.’

I turned and kissed her. We made love and I hated it and hated it, but would not stop.

Can love really belong to the demon? What sort of demon? The brown demon that rattles the ear? The red demon that dances the hornpipe? The watery demon that causes sickness? The orange demon that beguiles? Everyone has a demon like cats have fleas.

this is the city of Lost Chances, and this, the Room of the Final Disappointment. You see, you can climb as high as you like, but if you’ve already made the Fundamental Mistake, you end up here, in this room. You can change your role, but never your circumstance. It’s too late for all that now, toodle-ooo, I’m about to become a buyer.’

her head she was still queen, but not my queen any more, not the White Queen any more. Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

The body that contains a spirit is the one true god. It is the nature of stone to convert bone. At one time or another there will be a choice: you or the wall.

A wall for the body, a circle for the soul.

I used to imagine we saw things just the same, but all the time we were on different planets.

felt nothing. But when she’d gone, I pulled up my knees under my chin, and begged the Lord to set me free.

‘Want an orange?’ she offered as we sat close, in a steady silence. She made to peel it. I grabbed her arm.

Inside you will find every plant that grows growing circular-wise like a target. Close to the heart is a sundial and at the heart an orange tree.

To eat of the fruit means to leave the garden because the fruit speaks of other things, other longings. So at dusk you say goodbye to the place you love, not knowing if you can ever return, knowing you can never return by the same way as this. It may be, some other day, that you will open a gate by chance, and find yourself again on the other side of the wall.

Once, trying to reach a huge icicle, I fell down on to a quarry ledge and couldn’t climb back again; the earth kept crumbling away. She barked and spluttered and then ran off to help me. Now, here we were, on a different edge.

It all seemed to hinge around the fact that I loved the wrong sort of people. Right sort of people in every respect except this one; romantic love for another woman was a sin.

she believed that you made people and yourself what you wanted. Anyone could be saved and anyone could fall to the Devil, it was their choice. While some of our church forgave me on the admittedly dubious grounds that I couldn’t help it (they had read Havelock Ellis and knew about Inversion), my mother saw it as a wilful act on my part to sell my soul.

Dusty now, but all things turn to dust.

ordered me to bed, and it seemed best to obey. My bed was narrow. I lay in it, unable to forgive myself, unable to forgive

‘Have an orange,’ I offered, by way of conversation. They both stared at me like I was mad. ‘They’re over there.’ I pointed to the window.

The devil had attacked me at my weakest point: my inability to realize the limitations of my sex.

For now, I had to be hard and white. In the frosty days, in the winter, the ground is white, then the sun rises, and the frosts melt . . .

It was not judgement day, but another morning.

As it is, I can’t settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never be destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love.