Jeanette Winterson Quotes

A society with no values outside of politics is a machine carrying its human cargo, with no purpose in its institutions reflecting their care, eternal aspirations, loneliness, need for love.

History is the study of what civilizations die from. Literature is the study of what civilizations live for.

First, believe in the world - that there is meaning behind everything.

Dreams, books, are each a world.

I'm a big history buff so to walk the streets...the ancient world like that was pretty astounding.

I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

The job of reading is to use stories as a way into seeing other people as we see ourselves

When you see someone as a human being, you begin to understand most people are doing what they believe is right. I ask myself, "What if you were wrong? How would you want someone to engage with you?"

When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?" What will you answer? "We all dwell together To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"? Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any “social contract” or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and its people.

The world was hers for the reading.

Without literature, life is hell.

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

When we read the right book generously, it can change the way think about the world around us.

By reading we discover our world, our history, and ourselves.

For this world that men have made, none of us is bad enough. For the world that made us, none is good enough.

That's what this country needs -- more books!

Man can find no better retreat from the world than art, and man can find no stronger link with the world than art.

There is always risk in relationships, but bottom line? The world has no meaning apart from relationships. Some are just messier than others, some are seasonal, others are difficult, and a few are easy, but every one of them is important.

Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.

All of US sometimes feel that one of the most difficult things in the world is to talk to US about US in an effort to help US.

At the end of the day, despite all the other great things that literature does in society and in a person's life, I think that we read to escape. And I think that place, more than anything, provides that escape quickly, if an author is engaged with the place.