Lighthousekeeping

Read Lighthousekeeping -- yet another one of Jeanette Winterson's wonderful books and wanted to share a few excerpts from it that moved me. I try not to seek out her books, so that from time to time I might chance on them, and always feel like I haven't yet read them all.

"Try and put your finger on the solid thing and it scattered into separate worlds."

"... this past would have to be dragged into the future, because the present had buckled under me, like a badly made chair."

"... a man may know himself, but he prides himself on his character, his integrity -- the word says it all -- integrity -- we use it to mean virtue, but it means wholeness too, and which of us is that?"



"He doubted her. You must never doubt the one you love.
But they might not be telling you the truth.
Never mind that. You tell them the truth.
What do you mean?
You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own.
So what should I say?
When?
When you love someone?
You say it."

"The world is nothing. Love formed it.
The world vanishes without trace.
What is left is love."

"'Why are you afraid?' I asked myself, because fear is at the bottom of everything, even love usually rests on fear. 'Why are you afraid, when whatever you do, you will die anyway?'"

"What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you."

"I used to be a hopeless romantic. I still am a hopeless romantic. I used to believe that love was the highest value. I still believe that love is the highest value. I don't expect to be happy. I don't imagine I will find love, whatever that means, or  that if I do find it, it will make me happy. I don't think of love as the answer or the solution. I think of love as a force of nature -- as strong as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming, as drought-making as it is life-giving. And when it burns out, the planet dies.
My little orbit of life circles love. I daren't get any closer. I'm not a mystic seeking final communion. I don't go out without SPF 15. I protect myself.
But today, when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe. Myself even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.
But love it is that wins the day. On this burning road, fenced with barbed wire to keep the goats from straying, I find for a minute what I came here for, which is a sure sign that I will lose it again instantly.
I felt whole."

"I looked back at you. These moments that are talismans and treasure. Cumulative deposits -- our fossil record -- and the beginnings of what happens next. They are the beginning of a story, and the story we will always tell."

"There is so little life, and it is fraught with chance. We meet, we don't meet, we take the wrong turning, and still bump into each other."

"Not many of them [baby turtles] make it to the sea, and once there, the sharks are waiting for them. Days disappear and get swallowed up much like that, but the ones like these, the ones that make it, swim out and return for the rest of your life.
Thank you for making me happy."








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