Jeanette Winterson Time Quotations

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

If the sun is shining, stand in it- yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass- they have to- because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred. What you are pursuing is meaning- a meaningful life... There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.

The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.