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

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“Buffalo Hump knew his son was brave, but that was not enough. If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.”
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“OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.

What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.

Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.

A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.

But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.

When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this:
“You are not enough people!”

I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who has six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.

They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome.

Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

“A magician is a rule-of-thumb engineer.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Glory Road

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