beth > beth's Quotes

“Trust me, I'm telling you stories.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“What you risk reveals what you value.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“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

“You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“the buddhists say there are 149 ways to god. i'm not looking for god, only for myself, and that is far more complicated.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

“The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

“I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
― William Shakespeare

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no more
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so
Since summer first was leafy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey, nonny, nonny.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
― Alice Walker

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“Silence is safe.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“Some of us rush through life and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White