Jeanette Winterson on Love

Jeanette Winterson was kindly asked to define love. Here are her impressions: 

St. John of the Cross: “In the evening of life, we shall be judged on love alone.” 

W. H. Auden: “Let no one say I Love until aware / What huge resources it will take to nurse / One ruining speck, one tiny hair / That casts a shadow through the universe.” 

Freud: “Men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved.” 

From 19th-century novels, that love and money are fatally bartered as interchangeable currencies. 

From poetry, that love is a language that has to be learned. 

From the Bible, that love is as strong as death. 

From my novel “Written on the Body”: “Why is the measure of love loss?”

But 20 years later I discovered that love could be as reliable as the sun. And that there is one other thing in a world infatuated by wealth. Love never counts the cost.

2012 - It's Dickens Time!

Everybody has heard of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest writers in English literature and I dare say, everybody has read one or more of his works. If not (shame on you!) 2012 is the time to (re)discover him, since the literary world is celebrating 200 years since his birth.
You can find everything about his life here , his works online here or any related event to Dickens 2012 here. Oh, and if you happen to visit London, The Charles Dickens Museum has reopened.
For those pressed for time, the BBC has adapted Dickens' works for the screen and Great Expectations broadcast at the end of 2011 was a total success for the British audience and I loved it, but I still have trouble deciding if it's better or not than the 1998 version...



"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

"I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death."

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."

Quotes taken from Great Expectations.

The Jane Austen in Me

Take the Quiz here!

Marianne Dashwood is a fictional character in the Jane Austen novel "Sense and Sensibility". The 17-year-old second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood, she embodies the ‘sensibility’ of the title, as opposed to her elder sister Elinor’s ‘sense.’

Here are a few of this character's words of wisdom:

"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others."

"I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. . . ."

Peonies

"Out of the gravel there are peonies growing. They come up through the loose grey pebbles, their buds testing the air like snails' eyes, then swelling and opening, huge dark-red flowers all shining and glossy like satin. Then they burst and fall to the ground." (p.5)

"I watch the peonies out of the corners of my eyes. I know they shouldn't be here.It's April, and peonies don't bloom in April. There are three more now right in front of me, growing out of the path itself. Furtively I reach out my hand to touch one. It has a dry feel, and I realize it's made of cloth." (p.6)



"It was Agnes who helped me with the burial. We put flowers from Mrs. Alderman Parkinson's garden into the coffin, having asked permission; and it being June, there were long-stemmed roses and peonies; and we chose only the white ones. I scattered the petals of them over her as well, and I slipped in the needle-case I'd made for her, but out of sight, as it might look wrong otherwise, being red; and I cut a piece off the back of her hair to remember her by, and tied it together with a thread." (p.229)

"It was a lovely and windless evening, and the birds were twittering, and the trees in the orchard near the road were golden in the late sunlight, and the purple milkweed flowers that grew beside the drive smelled very sweetly; and also the last few peonies beside the verandah, and the climbing roses; and the coolness came down out of the air, while Jamie sat and played on his flute, so plaintively it did your heart good." (p.268)

"If you stare into the darkness with your eyes open you are sure to see something after a time. I hope it will not be flowers. But this is the time they like to grow, the red flowers, the shining red peonies which are like satin, which are like splashes of paint. The soil for them is emptiness, it is empty space and silence. I whisper, Talk to me; because I would rather have talking than the slow gardening that takes place in silence, with the red satin petals dripping down the wall.
I think I sleep." (p.344)

All quotes taken from Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood, book offered by Corri.