Jeanette Winterson

I do think that the relationship my mother enjoyed with God had a lot to do with positioning.

but she never was particularly fair

It’s odd, the things other people think are exciting.

Poor Mrs Finch. How did she live with him? Then I remembered the gypsy. ‘You’ll never marry.’ That might not be such a bad thing after all.

She said stories helped you to understand the world.

‘There’s this world,’ she banged the wall graphically, ‘and there’s this world,’ she thumped her chest. ‘If you want to make sense of either, you have to take notice of both.’

You had to make salvation relevant to them, to their minds. So, if you visited a sea people, you used sea metaphors to pass on the message. And most important, when talking to individuals, you determined as soon as you could what they most wanted in life, and of what they were most afraid. This made the message immediately relevant.

but today I was too unhappy.

I was bewildered, then angry, in-the-stomach angry.

At school there was only confusion.