The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.
Interpretation
Timeless work resonates beyond its era, remaining relevant even when contemporary interests fade.
Jeanette Winterson's quote emphasizes the enduring quality of truly great art and literature. It suggests that the most significant creations are those that continue to communicate and evoke feelings long after the initial context and trends have disappeared, highlighting the importance of timelessness in creative endeavors.
In practice
In a graduation speech about the importance of creativity in the future, one might quote this to inspire students.
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.
What I used to do with a passion, foolishly and vainly imagining I would change the world for the better, I no longer tolerate in myself or anyone else. But draw, always draw - and WRITE.
I didn't start off as a journalist; I started off as a poet. My ambition was to practise poetry. Then I found journalism, but that other voice never fled from me.
When the words come, they are merely empty shells without the music. They live as they are sung, for the words are the body and the music the spirit.
I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself
It's a very nice kind of quasi-fame being a writer, because you remain largely anonymous and you can have a private life, which I really cherish. I don't like to be in the public light all that much. I don't crave the whole fame thing at all.
Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it.
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