The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

by Jeanette Winterson

I hate this hospital. I sat in the car like this after my wife died. Staring out of the windscreen seeing nothing. The whole day passed and then it was night and nothing had changed because everything had changed.

I walked round the block thinking I’d think about it, but my legs were heading home, and sometimes you have to accept that your heart knows what to do.

The fucking fuckers fucked It crossed Cameron’s mind that this was a perfectly good sentence – adjective, noun, verb.

adjective, noun, verb: The fucking fuckers fucked

‘Do you believe in angels?’ said MiMi. The nurse was African. She belonged to an evangelical church. ‘Let me show you something,’ she said. She pulled back the curtains. MiMi could see the old church outside the window. ‘Look up high,’ said the nurse. The church had a clock tower. On top of the tower, one at each compass point, were four stone angels. ‘You see?’ said the nurse. ‘How they see it all? The cars going by, the men and women on the streets. All the hope and the heartbreak. Yes, that is what they see. And though the earth is lost, she will be found. ‘Whatever is lost will be found.’

Do you believe in Angels?

regrets come soon enough in life. Don’t go hunting for them.’

aint that the truth?

“Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.”’

‘He loves books,’ said Perdita. ‘Yeah. He does. When you’ve finished a book you can put it away and it doesn’t ask to see you again.’

She liked old houses. Not having a history of her own, she was drawn towards the history of others.

It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.