Jeanette Winterson Quotes

When you stop searching and you calm down and you put your books away, and you confront yourself and see what you are all about, that will bring about bliss faster than anything you can ever imagine or ever do.

Only when the clamor of the outside world is silenced will you be able to hear the deeper vibration. Listen carefully.

Action and contemplation are very close companions; they live together in one house on equal terms. Martha and Mary are sisters.

There are things that can only happen through you when you are still. Silence is often the most important work you can do.

But for me I think it's just about taking that time of reflection and contemplation. That's probably my process in every decision that I make: to make sure that I spend time just with myself, and really times of silence and mediation to go through that process; and music is a big part of that as well.

It is a difficult lesson to learn today-to leave one's friends and family and deliberately practice the art of solitude for an hour or a day or a week. And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.

We are so afraid of silence that we chase ourselves from one event to the next in order not to have to spend a moment alone with ourselves, in order not to have to look at ourselves in the mirror.

Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.

Cultivating quietness is a missing discipline today...the quietness needed to nurture an inner life hid in Christ.

Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.

When, by meditation, we withdraw restless thoughts from the lake of the mind, we behold our soul, a perfect reflection of Spirit.

This benefit of seeing...can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image...the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

I don't think any of my books tell the reader anything new. But they do remind, in a time that is strident and screeching about the limitations of this world and all the trouble we can get ourselves into.

There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.

This is the key to life: the ability to reflect, the ability to know yourself, the ability to pause for a second before reacting automatically. If you can truly know yourself, you will begin the journey of transformation.

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

Self-reflection is a desire felt by the body, as well as the soul. As dancers, healers, and saints all know, when you turn your attention toward even the simplest physical process - breath, the small movements of the eyes, the turning of a foot in midair - what might have seemed dull matter suddenly awakens.

Without the ability to think about yourself, to reflect on your life, there’s really no awareness, no consciousness. Consciousness doesn’t come automatically; it comes through being alive, awake, curious, and often furious.

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way.

Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.

That's what meditation is. You just sit with yourself.