Quotes from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“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.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“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.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do now know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I’ll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“No emotion is the final one.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“..to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“I didn’t want to tell the story of myself, but someone I called myself. If you read yourself as fiction, it’s rather more liberating than reading yourself as fact.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but thats quite hard to say casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It’s not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, and then being on somebody else’s.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“It is not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between them.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can you call home? Only the one who knows your name.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“If you think about something for long enough,' she explained, `more than likely, that thing will happen.' She tapped her head. `It's all in the mind.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“And when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth. God saw it. God knows. But I am not God. And so when someone tells me what they heard or saw, I believe them, and I believe their friend who also saw, but not in the same way, and I can put these accounts together and I will not have a seamless wonder but a sandwich laced with mustard of my own.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“If I let them take away my demons, I'll have to give up what I've found.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

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Popular quotes

“Okay, there were a lot of uncomfortable conversations a person had to have in their life. When they broke up with someone, for one. When they fucked up and had to admit they were wrong, for another. But talking to a dude who had his balls cut off about his balls being cut off beat them all.”
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“The human imagination may be the most elastic thing in the universe, stretching to encompass the millions of dreams that in centuries of relectless struggle built modern civilization, to entertain the endless doubts that hamper every human enterprise, and to conceive the vast menagerie of boogeymen that trouble every human heart.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from The Taking

“Fear not, nor be dismayed at the appearance that is darkness, at the disguise that is evil, at the empty cloak that is death, for you have picked these for your challenges. They are stones on which you choose to whet the keen edge of your spirit.”
― Richard Bach, quote from One

“I think that is called the ‘Golden Rule,’ Brennus. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’” I say with a crooked smile. Faolan looks at me strangely, asking, “Dat’s a rule? Den whah’s da ‘Silver Rule?’” Before I can answer, Eion chimes in, “Da ‘Silver Rule’ must be whah ye do when the ‘Golden Rule’ does na work. It must be, ‘Kill all da others before dey kill all of yous.’” Lachlan smiles at me and says, “Da ‘Golden Rule’ should really be, ‘Ye will bleed if ye do na do whah I’m telling ye.”
― Amy A. Bartol, quote from Indebted

“As it moves closer, Galen can make out smaller bodies within the mass. Whales. Sharks. Sea turtles. Stingrays. And he knows exactly what’s happening.
The darkening horizon engages the full attention of the Aerna; the murmurs grow louder the closer it gets. The darkness approaches like a mist, eclipsing the natural snlight from the surface.
An eclipse of fish.
With each of his rapid heartbeats, Galen thinks he can feel the actual years disappear from his life span. A wall of every predator imaginable, and every kind of prey swimming in between, fold themselves around the edges of the hot ridges. The food chain hovers toward, over them, around them as a unified force.
And Emma is leading it.
Nalia gasps, and Galen guesses she recognizes the white dot in the middle of the wall. Syrena on the outskirts of the Arena frantically rush to the center, the tribunal all but forgotten in favor of self-preservation. The legion of sea life circles the stadium, effectively barricading the exits and any chance of escaping.
Galen can’t decide if he’s proud or angry when Emma leaves the safety of her troops to enter the Arena, hitching a ride on the fin of a killer whale. When she’s but three fin-lengths away from Galen, she dismisses her escort. “Go back with the others,” she tells it. “I’ll be fine.”
Galen decides on proud. Oh, and completely besotted. She gives him a curt nod to which he grins. Turning to the crowd of ogling Syrena, she says, “I am Emma, daughter of Nalia, true princess of Poseidon.”
He hears murmurs of “Half-Breed” but it sounds more like awe than hatred or disgust. And why shouldn’t it? They’ve seen Paca’s display of the Gift. Emma’s has just put it to shame.”
― Anna Banks, quote from Of Triton

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