Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

by Jeanette Winterson

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.

The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.

A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door.

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.

Black is all the colours and Shakespeare is all the alphabet. I was reading his plays and sonnets the way that you get dressed every morning. You don’t ask yourself, ‘Shall I get dressed today?’ (On the days you don’t get dressed you are not well enough, either mentally or physically, to be able to ask – but we will go there later.)

Every book was a message in a bottle. Open it.

‘My advice is this. When you are young and you read something that you very much dislike, put it aside and read it again three years later. And if you still dislike it, read it again in a further three years. And when you are no longer young – when you are fifty, as am I – read the thing again that you disliked most of all.’