Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

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.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

I couldn’t forget her. Now she seemed to have forgotten everything. It made me want to shake her, to pull off all my clothes in the middle of the street and yell, ‘Remember this body?’ Time is a great deadener; people forget, get bored, grow old, go away. She said that not much had happened between us anyway, historically speaking. But history is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe knot it up a bit more.