A Quote by Jeanette Winterson
I struggled in my mind with all kinds of defenses. Should I be hurt? Surprised? Should I laugh it off? I wanted to say something cruel to expiate my anger and to justify myself. But it's difficult with old friends; difficult because it's so easy. You know one another as well as lovers do and you have had less to pretend about. I poured myself a drink and shrugged. 'Nothing's perfect.
Related Quotes
Nothing wrong with changing your mind. That's a very unwaffling thing to say: "Nothing wrong..." Who am I to say that there's nothing wrong with it? Maybe something is wrong with changing your mind. Anyway, love is very, very difficult. I love. But probably because I hate myself on some deep, sick level, it makes loving difficult. But I do try.
That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
I am very, very aware at all times. I'm watching myself, I'm listening to myself, I'm judging myself, critiquing myself all the time, and I will know when I do something and I will immediately say, "Can I do another one, because I didn't quite get that thing," or that I wanted to do something there and it didn't quite work.
It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously -- and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.
I felt strange in my own family, because I had a very liberal mind, and I would ask myself, "Why is there this discrimination between men and women?" In our culture, the man should be outside and the woman should be at home. I wanted to study, or meet my friends, and I couldn't. And I felt very different.
What troubles me is not that movie stars run for office, but that they find it easy to get elected. It should be difficult. It should be difficult for millionaires, too.
Sometimes, when I have to learn the lines in German and French, it's that much more difficult because it doesn't just sink in automatically, organically. I have to memorize it. It's a tricky thing, as well, as when you improvise, sometimes you want to say something but you don't know how to put it. It's more difficult than in your mother tongue. It's a challenge but, at the age of fifteen, I put myself up for it and I was aware that it would be an obstacle and many times.
I try to hurt myself, to sprain something, writing every novel and story, because I'm stretching for something new and difficult that I haven't done before.
It's not that difficult to find the rage or the anger. We all have that in us, and luckily, actors and actresses get to portray it, and it's not frowned upon. Everybody has that in them. Everybody has wanted to kill somebody at one time or another. Everybody has been really, really angry about something, so if you just call on that in yourself, you find it's not that difficult.
I found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: "I know nothing, I want nothing." Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all my knowledge is ignorance, that "I do not know" is the only true statement the mind can make....I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do.
It is difficult to find anything more healthy to drink than good cold water, such as flows down to us from springs and snows of our mountains. This is the beverage we should drink. It should be our drink at all times.
I'd have to say I enjoy myself a lot more, really. I don't feel so much responsibility as I did in other teams. It felt sometimes at Ajax and Liverpool that it had to be me. Now, every time I go out on to the pitch, I enjoy myself and laugh. I have gone through too many difficult times in my career and I don't want to keep thinking about them.
I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.
I've struggled enough in my life to be appreciated and understood. I've had to go against all kinds of people through the years just to be myself. I think everybody should be allowed to be who they are, and to love who they love. I don't think we should be judgmental. Lord, I've got enough problems of my own to pass judgment on somebody else.
When I have a difficult decision to make, I imagine myself as a 90-year-old guy looking back on his life. I imagine what I'll think about myself at that point in time, and it always makes it really easy to go for it. You're only going to regret that you wimped out.
When I talk about the pleasure principle, I don't say there is only one kind of pleasure, there are many kinds of pleasure. Some pleasure is difficult. It should be for the reader as well as the writer. But it has to be pleasure.
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