I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to

“I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.” — Jeanette Winterson

In these serene and luminous words, Jeanette Winterson, a modern mystic of language and solitude, describes not a life of isolation, but a life of presence — a life rich with simplicity, shaped by the quiet rhythms of nature and the intimate companionship of humble things. To the hurried soul, such a life might seem small; yet to the wise, it is vast. For within this simple sentence lies a philosophy as ancient as it is timeless: that contentment is not found in conquest or applause, but in harmony — in living deeply and attentively with what is near, and with what is real.

The origin of this quote comes from Winterson’s own life, one marked by both struggle and self-renewal. Born into poverty and raised under strict religious control, she learned early that to survive, one must create a world of one’s own. Writing became her sanctuary, and solitude her ally. When she speaks of her cats, books, and garden, she is not merely describing a domestic scene; she is revealing a spiritual landscape. Each of these things — the animals, the art, the nourishment of the body and the earth — forms part of her quiet cathedral of selfhood, a sacred space where peace is cultivated through care.

The ancients would have recognized this as the art of the simple life — what the Stoics called eudaimonia, the flourishing of the soul through virtue and self-sufficiency. Epicurus, the philosopher of the garden, taught much the same: that happiness is born not from wealth or luxury, but from living wisely, tending one’s own ground, and delighting in the daily gifts of nature and friendship. Winterson’s words, though modern, carry the same eternal echo — that to live well is to live attentively, to find abundance not in more possessions, but in more awareness.

Her mention of books and pictures reminds us that the mind, too, needs nourishment. Just as fresh vegetables sustain the body, stories and images feed the imagination. Through them, she communes with the spirits of other ages — the poets, the painters, the dreamers — as though they were friends gathered in her quiet room. And in her garden, she becomes both creator and caretaker, joining the endless cycle of life and renewal. To feed the hens, to tend the soil, to cook what one has grown — these are acts of reverence. They bind us again to the rhythm of the earth, the pulse that underlies all true peace.

There is also in her words a celebration of aloneness, distinct from loneliness. She does not lament her solitude; she claims it with joy. To “live alone,” for her, is to live freely — unburdened by the noise of conformity, able to listen to one’s own inner voice. The solitude she describes is not an escape from the world, but a return to the essence of being. It is in such quiet, she implies, that one rediscovers the forgotten language of life — the purr of a cat, the smell of herbs in the kitchen, the miracle of a seed becoming fruit.

Consider, as a mirror to her life, the story of Henry David Thoreau, who withdrew to Walden Pond to live deliberately. He, too, sought to “front only the essential facts of life,” to see whether life was sweet enough when stripped to its core. Like Winterson, he found divinity not in the temple nor the marketplace, but in simplicity — in the companionship of nature and the self. Such figures remind us that solitude, when chosen with purpose, is not exile but freedom, not emptiness but fullness.

So, O seeker of balance, take this teaching to heart: simplify, not to deny the world, but to rediscover it. Feed what is alive — both in your garden and in your spirit. Fill your home not with noise, but with meaning. Let books be your conversation, art your mirror, and nature your companion. For a life well-lived is not measured by how much we acquire, but by how deeply we dwell in what we already have.

In the end, Jeanette Winterson’s words remind us that peace is not something found — it is something made, moment by moment, through care and attention. To live alone, yet never be lonely; to tend the earth and the self with equal tenderness — this is the quiet heroism of the soul. It is the art of living fully in one’s own company, until solitude itself becomes not a place of retreat, but a garden of light.