Jeanette Winterson

Interweaving elements of fantasy and history, this novel chronicles the adventures of Jordan, who lives with his mother by the Thames during the reign of Charles II, as he follows his dreams to the end of the world, and beyond

Sexing the Cherry

Taira Robles

Jordan.. I should have named him after a stagnant pond and then I could have kept him, but I named him after a river and in the flood-tide he slipped away.

In the world there is a horror of plagues. Of mysterious diseases that wipe out towns and cities, leaving empty churches and bed clothes that must be burned. Holy water and crosses and mountain air and the protection of saints and a diet of watercress are all thought to save us as a species from rotting. But what can save us as a species from love? A man sold me a necklace made of chicken bones; he said these chickens were the direct descendants of the chickens who had scratted around the crib at Bethlehem. The bones would save me from pain of every kind and lead me piously to Heaven. He was wearing some himself. 

He shook his head and assured me that nothing was proof against love. Not even the slightest amourette could be  forestalled by an amulet. 

kite

"Singing is my pleasure, but not in church, for the parson said the gargoyles must remain on the outside, not seek room in the choir stalls."

"The woman who owned the fish stall warned me never to try and cheat another woman but always to try and charge the men double or send them away."

"Men are best left in groups by themselves where they will entirely wear themselves out in drunkenness and competition. While this is taking place a woman may carry on with her own life unhindered."

"I am a sinner, not in body but in mind. I know what love sounds like because I have heard it through the wall, but I do not know what it feel like. What can it be like, two bodies slippery as eels on a mud-flat, panting like dogs after a Pig?

I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever."

"It is well known that those in the grip of heavy enchantments can be wakened only by a lover's touch. Those who seem dead, who are already returning to the earth, can be restored to life, quickened again by one who is warm."

"I have no vanity but I would enjoy the consolation of a lover's face."

"Most, she releases like butterflies over a flowering world. Bodies that could have bent double and grown numb she maintains as metal in a fiery furnace, tempering, stretching, forcing sinews into impossible shapes and calling her nature."

"On more than one occasion I have been ready to abandon my whole life for love. To alter everything that makes sense to me and to move into a different world where the only known will be the beloved. Such a sacrifice must be the result of love... or is it that the life itself was already worn out? I had finished with that life, perhaps, and could not admit it, being stubborn or afraid, or perhaps did not know it, habit being a great binder."

Sexing the Cherry quotes

Join the club