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Daily Inspiration Quote by Jeanette Winterson

"The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home"

About this Quote

Curiosity, in Winterson's hands, isn`t a cute personality trait; it`s a life choice with an exit wound. The line moves like a cautionary tale but refuses the comfort of a moral. "Always in some danger" is blunt, almost parental, yet the real threat arrives in the second sentence, where "might never come home" turns metaphor into consequence. Home isn`t just a place you return to; it`s an identity you re-enter. Curiosity risks exile from the self you were before you asked the question.

Winterson is a novelist of thresholds: gender, desire, belief, language, family. Her work often treats the stable categories we inherit as provisional stories, and curiosity is the engine that wrecks them. That`s the subtext here: once you start probing the official narrative - of a relationship, a religion, a nation, a body - you may lose access to the old map. "Come home" doubles as a promise society dangles to keep you compliant: explore, but not too far; change, but remain recognizable.

The intent isn`t to scold. It`s to name the price of serious attention. Winterson pitches curiosity as an ethical and artistic posture: the refusal to accept handed-down meanings. The danger isn`t melodrama; it`s social, emotional, even economic. Curiosity can cost you belonging, family peace, the easy fiction that everything you were told fits. The line works because it dignifies that risk without romanticizing it: curiosity doesn`t guarantee enlightenment, only departure.

Quote Details

TopicWanderlust
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Winterson, Jeanette. (2026, January 16). The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-curious-are-always-in-some-danger-if-you-are-83131/

Chicago Style
Winterson, Jeanette. "The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-curious-are-always-in-some-danger-if-you-are-83131/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-curious-are-always-in-some-danger-if-you-are-83131/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.

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Jeanette Winterson on Curiosity and Home
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About the Author

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Jeanette Winterson (born August 27, 1959) is a Novelist from United Kingdom.

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