Joy

“I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me.

So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.

It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories