Jeanette Winterson

As your lover describes you, so you are.

What you risk reveals what you value.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.

When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.

To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.

Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.