Rachel Cusk Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• I was aware, in those early days of motherhood, that my behaviour was strange to the people who knew me well. It was as though I had been brainwashed, taken over by a cult religion. And yet this cult, motherhood, was not a place where I could actually live. Like any cult, it demanded a complete surrender of identity to belong to it.

  Rachel Cusk

  Taken, Motherhood, People

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• My children are living, thinking human beings. It isn't in my power to regret them, for they belong to themselves.

  Rachel Cusk

  Children, Regret, Thinking

  "I was only being honest" by Rachel Cusk, www.theguardian.com. March 21, 2008.

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• To become a mother is to learn a whole language - to relearn it, perhaps, as it was the tongue to which we were born - and hence gain entrance to a forgotten world of comprehension.

  Rachel Cusk

  Mother, World, Tongue

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• Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.

  Rachel Cusk

  Book, Taken, Writing

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• Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude.

  Rachel Cusk

  Gratitude, Helping, Economy

  Rachel Cusk (2012). “Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation”, p.19, Faber & Faber

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• Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.

  Rachel Cusk

  Reality, Negative, Might

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline: A Novel”, p.29, Macmillan

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• The woman who thinks she can choose femininity, can toy with it like the social drinker toys with wine - well, she's asking for it, asking to be undone, devoured, asking to spend her life perpetrating a new fraud, manufacturing a new fake identity, only this time it's her equality that's fake.

  Rachel Cusk

  Wine, Thinking, Fake

  Rachel Cusk (2012). “Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation”, p.13, Faber & Faber

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• An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were; that wherever the proposition might first have come from, the unacceptability of the female body has been disseminated culturally.

  Rachel Cusk

  Epidemics, Eating Disorder, Female

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• I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying.

  Rachel Cusk

  Children, Waiting, Annoying

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• I have absolutely no concept of work, except for university. But I like to talk to people a lot about their jobs.

  Rachel Cusk

  Jobs, People, University

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• The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be "taught" - is disturbing.

  Rachel Cusk

  Creativity, Ideas, Childhood

  "Can creative writing ever be taught?" by Rachel Cusk, www.theguardian.com. January 29, 2010.

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• Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what you want, I think English rural communities offer quite a lot of material.

  Rachel Cusk

  Thinking, Community, Black

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• The British have always made terrible parents.

  Rachel Cusk

  Parent, Made, British

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• Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people.

  Rachel Cusk

  People, Feminism, Needs

  "Mum's the word". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2003.

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• What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?

  Rachel Cusk

  Jobs

  "Rachel Cusk: in praise of the creative writing course" by Rachel Cusk, www.theguardian.com. January 18, 2013.

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• I think a lot of artists no longer want to participate in or be associated with narrative because of its corruptedness in contemporary culture.

  Rachel Cusk

  Artist, Thinking, Culture

  "Go Forth (Vol. 34)". The Believer Interview, logger.believermag.com. June 17, 2015.

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• We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.

  Rachel Cusk

  Sight, Forever, Trying

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• Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.

  Rachel Cusk

  Children, Writing, Creativity

  "Rachel Cusk: in praise of the creative writing course" by Rachel Cusk, www.theguardian.com. January 18, 2013.

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• The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.

  Rachel Cusk

  Writing, Contemporary Fiction, Needs

  "Go Forth (Vol. 34)". Interview with Alice Whitwham, logger.believermag.com. June 17, 2015.

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• What I increasingly felt, in marriage and in motherhood, was that to live as a woman and to live as a feminist were two different and possibly irreconcilable things.

  Rachel Cusk

  Motherhood, Two, Feminist

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• I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.

  Rachel Cusk

  Novelists, Scientist, Social

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• Human beings have a need, generally, to destroy things. The Freudian principle of civilisation is correct. There's always, always a difference between the family image and the reality.

  Rachel Cusk

  Reality, Differences, Principles

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• You could time a suburban story by your watch: it lasts as long as it takes a small furry animal that's lonely to find friends, or a small furry animal that's lost to find its parents; it lasts as long as a quick avowal of love; it lasts precisely as long as the average parent is disposed on a Tuesday night to spend reading aloud to children.

  Rachel Cusk

  Lonely, Children, Reading

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• I absolutely don't dislike children - I would choose their company over adult company any time.

  Rachel Cusk

  Children, Adults, Company

  "Rachel Cusk: A fine contempt". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. August 29, 2009.

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• Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who find it easier. I'm afraid I don't have the latest figures to confirm this.

  Rachel Cusk

  Children, People, Firsts

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