Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she (Mrs Winterson) was to herself. The baby nobody picked up. The uncarried child still inside her.

Why is the measure of love loss?

Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.

Six books… my mother didn’t want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books – that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

Memory loss is one way of coping with damage.

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.

If educated ones would behave like illiterates, how the nation would end corruption?

You used words, discarding them meaninglessly, without thinking, whereas I thought they held meaning. I found what you will never see: that my love resides on the other side of words. - Broken Places

I had fought on behalf of man against the sea, but I realised that it had become more urgent to fight on behalf of the sea against men.

There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty

Every experience I've had in my life is a resource in my body.

You are always free to choose what you do first, what you do second, and what you do not do at all

We have the men--the skill--the wealth--and above all, the will.... We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

You cant build any kind of organization if youre not going to surround yourself with people who have experience and skill base beyond your own.

Globalization means using slaves to manufacture products that are then sold to the unemployed!

We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.