Jeanette Winterson Quotes

To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the world.

Whether you reach a lot of people or have a profound impact on a few people, their memories of you are your afterlife.

To have influence, you really don't need to have power. But what you need more than anything else is to have that almost uncanny understanding of what matters to people.

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

The worse thing in the world is for an individual to live, breath and exist and leave this earth, die, and not make impact.

When we talk about having a life of significance and meaning, it's not about fame or money or resources. It's about people and lives and hearts. That's my biggest passion in life.

Although it sounds cliche, the main thing I want to do is touch people with what I do. I want everything I do to be meaningful, and I want it to be about more than just myself, or the money.

What is important is the character that I play. Making an impact is far more important than the length of the role.

We forget that everything has a meaning, everything has an impact on you. It's what we call soft power today. Nothing is innocent.

I gravitate towards strong messages and things that make an impact.

When I leave this world, I don't want to leave just having a well-known name but having made a difference.

You want to be part of something like that, that's something bigger than yourself, that's something you leave a legacy of being part of something special.

I've impacted peoples' lives in such a way that they'll never forget.

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.

If we are going to make a mark (key 21), it might as well be a meaningful one.

Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.

Over the years I have met a lot of important people, but no one as important as Elvis Presley.

We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable.

Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn't mean you've reached them.

The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it’s one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

You must judge a man's greatness by how much he will be missed.

The question is not Will you succeed? but rather, Will you matter?

Everything means something.

The goal of life is not to have our lives mean something to ourselves. The goal of life is to have our lives mean something to others.