[b]Jeanette Winterson
Most kids grow up leaving something out for Santa at Christmas time when he comes down the chimney. I used to make presents for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.[/b]
For some, they can’t come too soon.
I was at a party in 1989 and Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie were sitting on a sofa wondering where the next generation of great British writers would come from. As we talked, it became clear they had never read a word by me.
Shame on them!
You had once asked me if I was afraid of death.
I said I was afraid of not living.
Or, sure, maybe both.
I walked out to brood on this life of ours, which seems from birth to death to be a steady loss, disguised by sudden gains and happiness, which persuade us of good fortune, when all the while the glass is emptying.
When it isn’t shattered on the floor in a thousand pieces.
If there’s such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore.
Let’s pin this down. Then move on to the father.
I can’t believe that we have reached the end of everything. The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but we’re here, we’re alive, we’re the human race, we have survived wars and terrorism and scarcity and global famine, and we have made it back from the brink, not once but many times. History is not a suicide note - it’s a record of our survival.
Obviously: Some more than others.