"Written on the Body" jeanette winterson

"You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say
to one another is still the thing we log to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation"

"She stroke my hair. 'I want you to come to me without a past. Those lines you've learned, forget them. Forget that you've been here before in other bedrooms in other places. Come to me new. Never say you love me until that day when you have proved it.'
'How shall I prove it?'
'I can't tell you what to do."

"We were quiet together after we had made love. We watched the afternoon sun fall across the garden, the log shadows of early evening making patterns on the white wall. I was holding Louise's hand, conscious of it, but sensing too that a further intimacy might begin, the recognition of another person that is deeper than consciousness, lodged in the body more that held in the mind. I didn't understand that sensing, I sondered if it might be bogus, I'd never known it myself although I'd seen it in a couple who'd been together for a very log time. Time had not diminish their love. They seemed to have become one another without losing their very individual selves. Only once had I seen it and envied it. The odd thing about Louise, being with Louise, was déjà vu. I couldn't know her well and yet I did know her well. No facts and figures, I was endlessly curious about her life, rather a particular trust. That afternoon, it seemed to me I had always been here with Louise, we were familiar."

"Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights; the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsets is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes. Never unfold too much, tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book."

"It was a game, fitting bone on bone. I thought difference was rated to be the largest part of sexual attraction but there are so many things about us that are the same.
Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. To remember you it's my own body I touch."

"You'll get over it...' It's the clichés that cause the trouble. to lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don't get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?"

"I miss you Louise. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit and not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, and make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call."