Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

by Jeanette Winterson

but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story’s silent twin. There are so many things that we can’t say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory.

I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.

We always think the thing we need to transform everything – the miracle – is elsewhere, but often it is right next to us. Sometimes it is us, ourselves.

‘The trouble with a book is that you never know what’s in it until it’s too late.’

We can’t negotiate with that powerful but enraged part of us until we teach it better manners – which means getting it back in the bottle to show who is really in charge. This isn’t repression, but it is about finding a container. 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.

whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.

In the beginning the love you get is the love that sets.

‘Right or wrong, this is the road and we are on it.’

life has an inside as well as an outside and that events separated by years lie side by side imaginatively and emotionally.

People’s lives are less important than procedure . . .