Alice Urchin > Alice's Quotes

“When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Her butler opened it for her. His name was Boredom. She said, 'Boredom, fetch me a plaything.' He said 'Very good ma'am,' and putting on his white gloves so that fingerprints would not show he tapped at my heart and I thought he said his name was Love. ”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Trust me, I'm telling you stories. ... I can change the story. I am the story.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun. This place will warm me, feed me and care for me. I will hold on to this pulse against other rhythms. The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“She arches her body like a cat on a stretch. She nuzzles her cunt into my face like a filly at the gate. She smells of the sea. She smells of rockpools when I was a child. She keeps a starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She's refilled each day with fresh tides of longing.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Destiny is a worrying concept. I don't want to be fated, I want to choose.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“You said, ‘I’m going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.’ I’ve hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one’s watching. They haven’t faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it’s not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Sanity is a madness put to good uses.”
― George Santayana , The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“I want to be violated by insight.”
― Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son; she is the first gesture that creates a quiet that is full enough to make the baby sleep.

My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside.

Amen.”
― Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures: Stories

“I give boring people something to discuss over corn.”
― Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.”
― Aimee Bender

“The wine glasses are empty except for that one undrinkable red spot at the bottom.”
― Aimee Bender

“My lover is experiencing reverse evolution.”
― Aimee Bender

“I've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy hold you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of the stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes that you're not her, and so you get all this nice residue emotion. I felt cherished, tucked into his belly, like we'd known each other for years and I was his wonderful girl and we both slept great.”
― Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“There's a gift in your lap and it's beautifully wrapped and it's not your birthday. You feel wonderful, you feel like somebody knows you're alive, you feel fear because it could be a bomb, because you think you're that important.”
― Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“My genes, my love, are rubber bands and rope; make yourself a structure you can live inside.

Amen."
— Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)”
― Aimee Bender

“You're the perfect girl', he said, rubbing his chin. 'You expect nothing.”
― Aimee Bender

“But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was candles, did she think she'd done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips, and the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?”
― Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“We're all getting too smart. Our brains are just getting bigger and bigger, and the world dries up and dies when there's too much thought and not enough heart.”
― Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“I don't think so, I don't agree. The most unbearable thing I think by far, she said, is hope.”
― Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“Pain was no longer a mystery to him, and a man familiar with pain has entered a new kind of freedom.”
― Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures

“While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.”
― Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures