It's only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and I. The alphabet of my DNA shapes certain words, but the story is not told. I have to tell it myself. What is it that I have to tell myself again and again? That there is always a new beginning, a different end. I can change the story. I am the story. Begin.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-creation and the ability to redefine one’s own narrative.
Jeanette Winterson's quote reflects the idea that life is fundamentally a narrative that we have the power to shape and alter. It suggests that while our experiences may be viewed as part of a larger story, it is up to each individual to own and articulate their own story, recognizing that every moment offers an opportunity for a new beginning and a change in direction. This perspective encourages personal growth and the belief that we are not merely products of our circumstances, but active participants in our own life stories.
In practice
During a motivational speech about embracing new opportunities.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat My dress is 1922… My life is all like that.
Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?
I lost relatives to AIDS. A couple of my closest cousins, favorite cousins. I lost friends to AIDS, high school friends who never even made it to their 21st birthdays in the '80s. When it's that close to you, you can't - you know, you can't really deny it, and you can't run from it.
We're all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth 'til death. We travel between the eternities.
Now they came back to him, on this night he was seventeen years old. All the years and places of his brief broken life came within mind's reach and made a whole again. He knew once more, at last, after this long, bitter, waisted time, who he was and where he was. But where he must go in the years to come, that he could not see; and he feared to see it.
I don't ask anyone else to live my life. I have enough trouble doing that.
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