somethingforthepain:

- How do you feel about being interviewed?

I feel like a perfectly good potato put through a masher. Nothing comes out the way I expected, and my skin is off, and the solid, sane things get pulped and the whole thing is served up easy to swallow, but not for me. I am still somewhere at the bottom of the masher shouting “I AM A POTATO GET ME OUT OF HERE”.

- Why do you think what you do matters?

Art and potatoes are pretty similar. Everyone needs slow-release energy and something to stabilise the gut. Art does that – it isn’t fast food, but it isn’t fancy food either. It’s the solid stuff of life. I once had lunch at Heston Blumenthall’s Fat Duck at Bray. I was very depressed because I am not a chocolate risotto kind of person. That night I dug up new potatoes from my garden with my hands, steamed them, covered them in olive oil and mint and chives, and ate nothing else. Then I felt better. The same thing happens to me with a book or a painting. It reminds me that life is good and solid, not about money and not about fad.

- Have you ever found true love?

Yes, but then what do you do?

— Jeanette Winterson, on Questions that authors are never asked