“I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn't lost.”

English author

Jeanette Winterson is an English author. She is known for her fiction, especially her debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical story about a lesbian growing up in an English Pentecostal community. Her later novels often explore gender and sexual identity, and her more recent work turns to the relationship between people and technology. Her books have been translated into nearly 20 languages, and she also broadcasts and teaches creative writing.