Ona > Ona's Quotes

“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“What you risk reveals what you value.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“Why is the measure of love loss?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

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

“Trust me, I'm telling you stories.”
― Jeanette Winterson

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

“Intensity is the desire to receive. Open yourself to light and you will become light.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“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, The Passion

“Trust me, I'm telling you stories. ... I can change the story. I am the story.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“I choose this story above all others because it's a story I'm struggling to end. ”
― Jeanette Winterson

“Language is a finding-place not a hiding place.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
― Tom Robbins

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.”
― Tom Robbins

“A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool.”
― Tom Robbins

“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid - but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.”
― Tom Robbins

“Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Death is simple. Life is messy. Give me life, the more complicated the better.”
― Tom Robbins

“The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.”
― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

“There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.”
― Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backward