The dark forest looked on fire. The trees were lit up like funeral pyres. She thought she saw bodies strapped to the trees, burning, burning, burning.
That night, I knew I would get away, better myself. Not because I despised who I was, but because I did not know who I was. I was waiting to be invented. I was waiting to invent myself.
Tell me a story, Pew.What kind of story, child?A story with a happy ending.There’s no such thing in all the world.As a happy ending?As an ending.
THERE’S NO SUCH thing as a limited victory. Every victory leaves another resentment, another defeated and humiliated people. Another place to guard and defend and fear. What I learned about war in the...
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.
Slightest accidents open up new worlds.
She was fragile, gentle, wide awake in a sleeping world.
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.
She laughed. What about your wings? she said. How can you forget those when the stumps are still deep in your shoulder-blades?I didn’t say anything. In the Bible only the angels have wings; the rest o...
She hated the small and the mean, and yet that is all she had. I bought a few big houses myself along the way, simply because I was trying out something for her. In fact, my tastes were more modest --...
She had other favourite lines. Our gas oven blew up. The repairman came out and said he didn't like the look of it, which was unsurprising as the oven and the wall were black. Mrs Winterson replied, '...
She did not press me to do so, she had often said that as she got older she took what she could of life but expected little.Then I was gone.Every time I was tempted to go to her I went to the Casino i...
Shakespeare shook his head and sunk his chin into his ruff, making him look more owl-like than ever. I have written about other worlds often enough. I have said what I can say. There are many kinds of...
Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer suns...
Reportage is violence. Violence to the spirit. Violence to the emotional sympathy that should quicken in you and me when face to face we meet with pain. How many defeated among our own do we step over...
Pursuing happiness, and I did, and still do, is not at all the same as being happy- which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine.If the sun is shining, stand in it- yes, yes...
Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the saem as being happy - which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine.If the sun is shining, stand in it - yes,...
Pulsar: a dying star spinning under its own exploding anarchic energy, like a lighthouse on speed. A star the size of a city, a city the size of a star, whirling round and round, its death-song caught...
Physics, mathematics, music, painting, my politics, my love for you, my work, the star-dust of my body, the spirit that impels it, clocks diurnal, time perpetual, the roll, rough, tender, swamping, li...
Perhaps it is true that the world is made new again every day but our minds are not. The clamp that holds me will not let me go.