Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Melanie: Add a description of this character.
• Mrs White
• Elsie Norris
• Winnet
• Spratt
• Joe
• Doreen
• Mrs Arkwright
• Mrs Rothwell
• Katy
• Pierre
• Jeanette
• Betty
• Nellie
• Trickett
• Daniel
• Miss Jewsbury
• Pastor Finch
• Mrs Clifton
• Alice

Quotes edit see section history

• “"To eat of the fruit means to leave the garden because the fruit speaks of other things, other longings. So at dusk you say goodbye to the place you love, not knowing if you can ever return, knowing you can never return by the same way as this. It may be, some other day, that you will open a gate by chance, and find yourself again on the other side of the wall." pp.123”

• “Time is a great deadener.”

• “It was not judgement day, but another morning.”

• “. . . the things I had buried were exhuming themselves; clammy fears and dangerous thoughts and the shadows I had put away for a more convenient time. I could not put them away forever, there is always a day of reckoning. But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.”

• “I thought about . . . all the inevitable dying that comes with change. There's no choice that doesn't mean a loss.”

• “I felt miserable. When Keats felt miserable he always put on a clean shirt. But he was a poet.”

• “I learnt that it rains when clouds collide with a high building, like a steeple, or a cathedral; the impact punctures them, and everybody underneath gets wet. This was why, in the old days, when the only tall buildings were holy, people used to say cleanliness is next to godliness. The more godly your town, the more high buildings you’d have, and the more rain you’d get. ‘That’s why all these Heathen places are so dry,’ explained my mother...”

• “I didn't know quite what fornicating was, but I had read about it in Deuteronomy, and I knew it was a sin. But why was it so noisy? Most sins you did quietly so as not to get caught.”

• “But happiness is not a potato.”

• “If you want to find the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That's what I will find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on.”

• “(about love): Then I was frightened but couldn't stop. There was something crawling in my belly. I had an octopus inside me.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it.

  Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers

• Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

  Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers

• It meant that to create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement. Once created, the creature was separate from the creator, and needed no seconding to fully exist.

  Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers

• I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

  Highlighted by 16 Kindle customers

• Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will.

  Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers

• We stood on the hill and my mother said, `This world is full of sin. We stood on the hill and my mother said, `You can change the world.'

  Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers

• `There's this world,' she banged the wall graphically, `and there's this world,' she thumped her chest. `If you want to make sense of either, you have to take notice of both.'

  Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers

• Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

• Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity. To fit it, force it, function it, to suck out the spirit until it looks the way you think it should. We are all historians in our small way.

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

• One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but that's quite hard to say, casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It's not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's.

  Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Morecambe
• Blackpool
• England

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Love in the Time of Cholera, and followed by The Cider House Rules.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jeanette Winterson (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Whitbread Book Award (1985: First Novel)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 828'.914

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Gay & Lesbian › Literature & Fiction › Fiction › Lesbian
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( W ) › Winterson, Jeanette
• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Special Groups › Lesbian Studies
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (IMDb)

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history