Jeanette Winterson Quotes

I like alleys. They are the backdoor to everything.

Three things see no end- A flower blighted ere it bloomed, A message that was wasted, And a journey that was doomed.

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.

I'll never know, and neither will you of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends.

In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed from her and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she meant to answer with. . . .

Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate And though I oft have passed them by A day will come at last when I Shall take the hidden paths that run West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,But you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on.

The road doesn’t have to be infinite after all. Take the hidden paths.

We don't take a trip. A trip takes us.

I am going to that country which I have all my life wished to see.

For sure, you have to be lost to find a place that can’t be found.

But I'm taking small steps 'Cause I don't know where I'm going I'm taking small steps And I don't know what to say. Small steps, Trying to pull myself together And maybe I'll discover A clue along the way!

It's never fun when we're in the midst of the storm. But when we land someplace we know we never could have found on our own, it is a beautiful thing.

In dreams we stand in this great democracy of the possible and there we are right pilgrims indeed. There we go forth to meet what we shall meet.

There is your car and the open road, the fabled lure of random adventure. You stand at the verge, and you could become anything.

Travel is in sad case. It is uncomfortable, it is expensive; it is a source of annoyance to our friends, and of loneliness to ourselves.

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing, and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on.

It's my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they're going. For them it's the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your country, gets on and says hello.

There is no way back for me now, I'm going to take you on journeys you've never dreamed possible

A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea...Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don't go right now, we're never going to do it. And we'll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely.

Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost, but climb.

It’s not that you have to achieve anything, it’s that you have to get away from where you are.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

One path is greed, the second is curiosity. With one, the journey is to a reward; with the other, the journey is the reward.