Sexing the Cherry

OK, so the title may sound suggestive or weird, & maybe it is but I offer a new explanation. Sexing the Cherry is a crazy weird book by Jeanette Winterson. She uses TONS of myth, fairy tale, & biblical allusions. At first I really didn't like it, but once I got into it, I did. These are two of my favorite quotes from the book on running away & religion.


"... When I left England I thought I was running away. Running away from uncertainty and confusion but most of all running away from myself. I thought I might become someone else in time, grafted on to something better and stronger. And then I saw that the running away was a running towards. An effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way." - p. 86-87

"...God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help. We are alone in this quest, and Fortunata is rigt not to disguise it, though she may be wrong about love. I have met a great many pilgrims on their way towards God and I wonder why they have chosen to look for him rather than themselves. Perhaps I'm missing the point - perhaps whilst looking for someone else you might come across yorusef unexpectedly, in a garden somewhere or on a mountain watching the rain. But they don't seem to care about who they are. Some of them have told me that the very point of searching for God is to forget about oneself, to lose oneself for ever. But it is not difficult to lose oneself, or is it the ego they are talking about, the hollow, screaming cadaver that has no spirit within it?
I think that cadaver is only the ideal self run mad, and if the other life, the secret life, could be found & brought home, then a person might live in peace and have no need for God. After all, He has no need for us, being complete." -116