Quotes from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“What is it that you contain? The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut. Every minute, in each of you, a few million potassium atoms succumb to radioactive decay. The energy that powers these tiny atomic events has been locked inside potassium atoms ever since a star-sized bomb exploded nothing into being. Potassium, like uranium and radium, is a long-lived radioactive nuclear waste of the supernova bang that accounts for you.

Your first parent was a star.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“The free man never thinks of escape.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“Nothing has an unlikely quality. It is heavy.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“The ancients believed in Fate because they recognized how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behavior. The burden is intolerable.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“Earth is ancient now, but all knowledge is stored up in her. She keeps a record of everything that has happened since time began. Of time before time, she says little, and in a language that no one has yet understood. Through time, her secret codes have gradually been broken. Her mud and lava is a message from the past.

Of time to come, she says much, but who listens?”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“I return to problems i can't solve, not because i am an idiot, but because the real problems can't be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see. Always a new beginning, a different end.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“Breathe in, breath out. Oxygen is carcinogenic and likely puts a limit on our life span. It would be unwise though, to try to extend life by not breathing at all.
Which of us doesn't do it? Either we loll in anaerobic stupor, too afraid to fill our lungs with risky beauty, or we roll out fire like dragons, destroying the world we love.
I try not to burn up my world with rage.
It is so hard.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“What can i tell you about the choices we make? Fate reads like the polar opposite of decision, and so much of life reads like fate.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“i realize that the future, though invisible, has weight. We are in the gravitational pull of past and future. It takes huge energy -speed of light power- to break the gravitational pull. How many of us ever get free of our orbit? We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives. We believe we can be our own miracles, and just a lottery win or Mr.right will make the world new.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“Atlas said, 'Must my future be so heavy?'
Hera said, 'That is your present, Atlas. Your future hardens every day, but it is not fixed.'
'How can I escape my fate?'
'You must choose your destiny.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“It was Hell, if hell is where the life we love cannot exist.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“We don’t know who we are or how to function, much less how to bloom. Blind nature. Homo sapiens. Who’s kidding whom?”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

“Atlas gazed out, as he always did, into infinite space, wishing he could be part of it, even for one hour.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

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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.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.