The Passion

Jeanette Winterson

I'm telling you stories. Trust me.

They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?

Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their feverishly wished for consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong.

I don't know why it is that one kind of dark can be so different from another. Real dark is thicker and quieter, it fill sup the space between your jacket and your heart. It gets in your eyes. When I have to be out late at night, it's not knives and kicks I'm afraid of, though there are plenty of those behind walls and hedges. I'm afraid of the Dark. You, who walk so cheerfully, whistling your way, stand still for five minutes. Stand still in the Dark in a field or down a track. It's then you know you're there on sufferance. The Dark only lets you take one step at a time. Step and the Dark closes round your back. In front, there is no space for you until you take it. Darkness is absolute. Walking in the Dark is like swimming underwater except you can't come up for air.

Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains, somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse.

If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession.

I can hear Bonaparte; he didn't last long on his rock. He put on weight and caught a cold, and he who survived the plagues of Egypt and the zero winter died in the mild damp.

We are a lukewarm people and our longing for freedom is our longing for love. If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.

I like such kisses. They fill the mouth and leave the body free. To kiss well one must kiss solely. No groping hands or stammering hearts. The lips and the lips alone are the pleasure. Passion is sweeter split strand by strand. Divided and re-divided like mercury then gathered up only at the last moment.

There was nothing we wouldn't believe to get us through: God was on our side, the Russians were devils. Our wives depended on this war. France depended on this war. There was no alternative to this war.
And the heaviest lie? That we could go home and pick up where we had left off. That our hearts would be waiting behind the door with the dog.
Not all men are as fortunate as Ulysses.

Love, they say, enslaves and passion is a demon and many have been lost for love. I know this is true, but I know too that without love we grope the tunnels of our lives and never see the sun. When I fell in love it was as though I looked into a mirror for the first time and saw myself. I lifted my hand in wonderment and felt my cheeks, my neck. This was me. And when I had looked at myself and grown accustomed to who I was, I was not afraid to hate parts of me because I wanted to be worthy of the mirror bearer.

But I tell you, Henri, that every moment you steal from the present is a moment you have lost for ever. There's only now.

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers. They talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. Never talk happiness with a philosopher.

Wherever love is, I want to be, I will follow it as surely as the land-locked salmon finds the sea.

This book will not be what you think it will. I hope you hate it. I hope you love it. Either one would at least be agreeing with Winterson to some extent. If ever there were a book that scrunched your forehead and made your heart thump it would be this--mostly at the same time. What are you supposed to think of a story that insists on reminding you quite often that it is a story, and even more, demands your trust. But it doesn't demand your trust. Winterson's characters simply say "Trust me." It almost loses its imperative qualities. Is she mocking herself? The story is simply too self-aware to be read peacefully.
The Passion does have good things to say, solid feelings to take away. Love is a way of risking all you value. Think about this; it switches the role we generally see love playing. It is not that you risk all you value to love, but love is one of the few ways you can genuinely reach such a stage of vulnerability or self-denial or sacrifice or ruin. Love is not the purpose so much as it is the tool. But tool is a horrible word and does not do the thought justice. Something much more like road, feeling or even Dao.
Frankly it is blunt. Don't let this turn you away. Life is more blunt. There was a time when I would probably have not read much past the second part of this book but hiding is no way to live. I was almost going to say that evil ideas won't harm you if you don't believe them, but this is bull. Evil ideas can seep into you; thoughts are insidious, so beware. Sometimes you have to risk much, but that doesn't mean you cannot keep your guard up.