Jeanette Winterson Quotes

I do believe that there are places where the mythological and the literal touch.

What I often do in my work is to take a great story, such as the Odyssey, the search for the Grail, the story of Jesus, or the story of the great peacemaker who helped create the Iroquois Confederacy in the 15th century. I then use these tales as templates upon which to weave psychological and spiritual exercises which allow us to open ourselves up to the larger venue of a story.

Myths are stories for our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to live and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are.

I see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can't have a free society until people are free to explore their own mind.

The freedom of an individual depends upon that individual's freedom to alter his considerations of space, energy, time and life and his roles in it. If he cannot change his mind about these, he is then fixed and enslaved amidst barriers such as those of the physical universe, and barriers of his own creation. Man thus is seen to be enslaved by barriers of his own creation. He creates these barriers himself, or by agreeing with things which hold these barriers to be actual.

This is all I ever wanted - to help students and artists see myth as a reflection of the one sublime adventure of life, and then to breathe new life into it.

Es binden Sklavenfesseln nur die H a« nde, Der Sinn, er macht den Freien und den Knecht. The chains of slavery can only bind the hands. The mind makes us either free or enslaved.

Nothing endures unless it has first been transposed into a myth, and the great advantage of myths is that they are ladies with portable roots.

I don't necessarily think stories have functions any more than diamonds have functions, or the sky has a function... Stories exist. They keep us sane, I think. We tell each other stories, we believe stories. I love watching the slow rise of the urban legend. They're the stories that we use to explain ourselves to ourselves.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.

Myths and science fulfill a similar function: they both provide human beings with a representation of the world and of the forces that are supposed to govern it. They both fix the limits of what is considered as possible.

Man's mind and spirit grow with the space in which they are allowed to operate.

Legends have always played a powerful role in the making of history. ... Without ever relating facts reliably, yet always expressing their true significance, they offered a truth beyond realities, a remembrance beyond memories.

Our powerful hunger for myth is a hunger for community. The person without a myth is a person without a home...To be a member of one's community is to share in its myths.

There is a condescension on the part of the infinite to the mind of man. That is what looks like God.

All the resources we need are in the mind.

There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state. -(from "The Bicentennial Man) story)

All things are true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live." - Peloquin

I need to develop some patience - immediately.

Never imitate. The mind is an imitator, because imitation is very easy. To be someone is very difficult. To become someone is very easy - all that you need is to be a hypocrite, which is not much of a problem. Deep down you remain the same, but on the surface you go on painting yourself according to some image.

We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.

I can move objects with my mind, if I use my hands.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead. Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.

Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.