Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

She was wrong, as far as we were concerned, but right as far as she was concerned, and really, that’s what mattered.

‘God’s in everything,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘so it’s always the same thing.’

‘There’s this world,’ she banged the wall graphically, ‘and there’s this world,’ she thumped her chest. ‘If you want to make sense of either, you have to take notice of both.’

Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. 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.

People like to separate storytelling which is not fact from history which is fact. They do this so that they know what to believe and what not to believe.

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

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’s a force field around yourself, and as long as our imagining powers are weak, it’s useful to have something physical to remind us.

Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to bring you back.

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 miss God who was my friend. I don’t even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it.

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.

But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.