Jeanette Winterson Quotes

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way?

A map is the dead body of where you've been. A map is the unborn baby of where you're going. There are no maps. Maps are pictures of what isn't.

We make a lot of detours, but we're always heading for the same destination

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.

You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there.

We're all pilgrims on the same journey - but some pilgrims have better road maps.

He who wars, walks in a mist, through which the keenest eyes cannot always discern the right path.

We're lost, but we're making good time.

When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere.

How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?

I know one thing for certain; it is much harder to tell whether you are lost than whether you were lost, for, on many occasions, where you are going is exactly where you are. On the other hand, if you often find that where you've been is not at all where you should have gone, and, since it's much more difficult to find your way back from someplace you've never left, I suggest you go there immediately and then decide.

I don't know why it's called "getting lost." Even when you turn down the wrong street, when you find yourself at the dead end of a chain-link fence or a road that turnd to sand, you are somewhere. It just isn't where you expected to be.

It's like many other things in life, Ellie. You keep on the path and all's well. You get off it and the next thing you know you're lost if you're not lucky.

Even an empty road leads somewhere, right?

The result of the voyage does not depend on the speed of the ship, but on whether or not it keeps a true course.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

XXIX Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking. Traveller, the path is your tracks And nothing more. Traveller, there is no path The path is made by walking. By walking you make a path And turning, you look back At a way you will never tread again Traveller, there is no road Only wakes in the sea.

['March'] is a path you must take if you want to move from one point to another point. If you want to make it down this very long and troublesome road, follow this path. Follow this message. Follow this map. And you will get there some day.

I know where I'm going. And if I don't know where I'm going, I don't tend to get anywhere.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.

Why did I walk so purposefully in a straight line? Where would it take me? He went round and round and we got there all the same.

Even the most straightforward of paths could turn out to be more complicated than it seemd at first.