Quotes from The Passion

“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.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“do it from the heart or not at all.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“I think now that being free is not being powerful or rich or well regarded or without obligation but being able to love. To love someone else enough to forget about yourself even for one moment is to be free.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“I say I'm in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. LIke genius she is ignorant of what she does.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“It may be that you are settled in another place it may be that you are happy but the one who took your heart wields final power.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.'
Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest.
Feel for yourself.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?
Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel to cities of the interior by chance, there is no preparation. We who are fluent find life is a foreign language. Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back worse.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Although wherever you are going is always in front of you, there is no such thing as straight ahead.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness.
We gamble. Some do it at the gaming table, some do not.
You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. ”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Somewhere between fear and sex passion is.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wished consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.

How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps, but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel along the blood vessels, who come to the cities of the interior by chance, there is no preparation. We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“She had made him possible. In that sense she was his god. Like God, she was neglected.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

By forgetting. We cannot keep in mind too many things.
There is only the present and nothing to remember.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“Do all lovers feel helpless and valiant in the presence of the beloved? Helpless because the need to roll over like a pet dog is never far away. Valiant because you know you would slay a dragon with a pocket knife if you had to.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“If you should leave me, my heart will turn to water and flood away.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“every moment you steal from the present is a moment you have lost for ever. There's only now.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“I'm telling you stories. Trust me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

“No. Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Passion

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Popular quotes

“Mystical experience needs some form of dogma in order not to dissipate into moments of spiritual intensity that are merely personal, and dogma needs regular infusions of unknowingness to keep from calcifying into the predictable, pontificating, and anti-intellectual services so common in mainstream American churches. So what does all this mean practically? It means that congregations must be conscious of the persistent and ineradicable loneliness that makes a person seek communion, with other people and with God, in the first place. It means that conservative churches that are infused with the bouncy brand of American optimism one finds in sales pitches are selling shit. It means that liberal churches that go months without mentioning the name of Jesus, much less the dying Christ, have no more spiritual purpose or significance than a local union hall. It means that we -- those of us who call ourselves Christians -- need a revolution in the way we worship. This could mean many different things -- poetry as liturgy, focused and extended silences, learning from other religious traditions and rituals (this seems crucial), incorporating apophatic language. But one thing it means for sure: we must be conscious of language as language, must call into question every word we use until we refine or remake a language that is fit for our particular religious doubts and despairs -- and of course (and most of all!) our joys.”
― Christian Wiman, quote from My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

“The question comes today as it did of old, “What shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ?” for you have to do something with Him: either you despise and reject Him, or you receive Him as the Saviour of your soul and the Lord of your life.”
― Arthur W. Pink, quote from The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross

“Morning after morning, I wake up with him lingering in my thoughts and I feel guilty without having any idea why.”
― Paula Weston, quote from Shadows

“...there is more to life than the main story. Check out the notes in the margins because maybe they're even more important.”
― Isabelle Rowan, quote from A Note in the Margin

“É belo morrer antes de se fazer algo digno da morte. - Anaxândrias”
― Aristotle, quote from Retorica

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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