Jeanette's Mother Quotes & Sayings

Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art ... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar ... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue. — Jeanette Winterson

My mother had painted the white roses red and now she claimed they grew that way. — Jeanette Winterson

My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.
I have no father. There's nothing unusual about that -even children who do have fathers are often surprised to see them. My own father came out of the sea and went back that way. He was crew on a fishing boat that harboured with us one night when the waves were crashing like dark glass. His splintered hulll shored him for long enough to drop anchor inside my mother.
Shoals of babies vied for life.
I won. — Jeanette Winterson

The boat was vacuum-packed with Albanians, four generations to a family: great-grandmother, air-dried like a chilli pepper, deep red skin and a hot temper; grandmother, all sun-dried tomato, tough, chewy, skin split with the heat; getting the kids to rub olive oil into her arms; mother, moist as a purple fig, open everywhere - blouse, skirt, mouth, eyes, a wide-open woman, lips licking the salt spray flying from the open boat. Then there were the kids, aged four and six, a couple of squirs, zesty as lemons. — Jeanette Winterson

I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex. — Jeanette Winterson

The only sex education my mother ever gave me was the injunction: 'Never let a boy touch you down there.' I had no idea what she meant. She seemed to be referring to my knees. — Jeanette Winterson

My mother told stories - of their life in the war and how she'd played the accordion in the air-raid shelter and it had got rid of the rats. Apparently rats like violins and pianos but they can't stand the accordion ... — Jeanette Winterson

If there's such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore. — Jeanette Winterson

My mother has often been labelled as strange but that's because she says things that people can't possibly believe. Mostly she's right. — Jeanette Winterson

My mother's eyes were like cold stars. She belonged in a different sky. — Jeanette Winterson

St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry. She wanted to be a nun. She hoped I would be a priest and saved to give me an education while my friends plaited rope and trailed after the plough.
I can't be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I'm not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion?
She says he can.
Then he should. — Jeanette Winterson

Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that.
She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window.
She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies.

Enemies were:
The Devil (in his many forms)
Next Door
Sex (in its many forms)
Slugs

Friends were:
God
Our dog
Auntie Madge
The Novels of Charlotte Bronte
Slug pellets
and me, at first. — Jeanette Winterson

When I was born, my mother dressed me as a boy because she could not afford to feed any more daughters. By the mystic laws of gender and economics, it ruins a peasant to place half a bowl of figs in front of his daughter, while his son may gorge on the whole tree, burn it for firewood and piss on the stump, and still be reckoned a blessing to his father. — Jeanette Winterson

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help. — Jeanette Winterson

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

When my mother heard about this, she was furious, and she crossed Nellie off her prayer list. My dad put her on his instead, so she didn't miss out. — Jeanette Winterson

My mother is very like William Blake, she has visions and dreams and she cannot always distinguish a flea's head from a king. Luckily she can't paint. — Jeanette Winterson

It's so crude' complained her mother, who believed in Good Taste the way Sunday worshipers believed in the Immaculate Conception. She wasn't quite sure what it was but she was sure it was important. — Jeanette Winterson

When I was born, my father wanted to drown me, but my mother persuaded him to let me live in disguise, to see if I could bring any wealth to the household. — Jeanette Winterson

Quoting her mother: The trouble with a book is you never know what's in it until it's too late! — Jeanette Winterson

You are young," said my father. "You won't get any younger even if you clean your teeth twice a day."

"You'll get older," said my mother, "that's what happens."

"Then what happens?"

"You won't be able to find the treasure."

"Will I be too old to look for it?"

"No, but you'll be looking in the wrong place. — Jeanette Winterson