Rachel Cusk Quotes

Quotes about:

• The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good.

  Rachel Cusk

  Mother, Wine, Reality

  50 Copy quote

• As it stands, motherhood is a sort of wilderness through which each woman hacks her way, part martyr, part pioneer; a turn of events from which some women derive feelings of heroism, while others experience a sense of exile from the world they knew.

  Rachel Cusk

  Motherhood, Feelings, Being A Mother

  13 Copy quote

• That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.

  Rachel Cusk

  Passion, Writing, Space

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline: A Novel”, p.49, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.

  Rachel Cusk

  Mother, Feelings, Would Be

  5 Copy quote

• Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.

  Rachel Cusk

  Childhood, Curiosity, States

  5 Copy quote

• The true self seeks release, not constraint. It doesnt want to be corseted in a sonnet or made to learn a system of musical notations. It wants liberation, which is why very often it fastens on the novel, for the novel seems spacious, undefined, free.

  Rachel Cusk

  Self, Musical, Want

  7 Copy quote

• As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.

  Rachel Cusk

  Writing, Average, Skins

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

  45 Copy quote

• It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiasticall y they drive you to your own destruction.

  Rachel Cusk

  Dream, People, Interesting

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline: A Novel”, p.160, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• I remain fascinated by where you go as a woman once you are a mother, and if you ever come back.

  Rachel Cusk

  Mother, Fascinated, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?

  Rachel Cusk

  Mother, World, Littles

  10 Copy quote

• Leaving things behind and starting again is a way of coping with difficulties. I learnt very early in my life that I was able to leave a place and still remain myself.

  Rachel Cusk

  Leaving, Able, Way

  4 Copy quote

• The distinctive feature of my family was intolerance of sensitivity and emotion - everything's great, it all has to be great all the time and why do you have to spoil it? Whereas probably the most fundamental and important thing to me has been defending my right to tell the truth about how I feel.

  Rachel Cusk

  Important, Fundamentals, Emotion

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

  5 Copy quote

• If love is what is held to make us immortal, hatred is the reverse.

  Rachel Cusk

  Love Is, Hatred, Immortal

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline: A Novel”, p.82, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

  Rachel Cusk

  People, Demonstrating

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline: A Novel”, p.71, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared. It brings you into a new relationship with the fact of your own existence, a relationship in which one may be rendered helpless.

  Rachel Cusk

  New Relationship, Events, May

  5 Copy quote

• For me, a novel is always the result of my attempt to impose myself on raw circumstances. It is a concrete form of lived experience.

  Rachel Cusk

  Form, Results, Circumstances

  "Keeping it in the family" by Rachel Cusk, www.theguardian.com. August 12, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.

  Rachel Cusk

  Two, Definitions, Belief

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline: A Novel”, p.81, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• A sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal.

  Rachel Cusk

  Character, Intuition, World

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline: A Novel”, p.21, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

• There is always shame in the creation of an expressive work, whether it's a book or a clay pot. Every artist worries about how they will be seen by others through their work. When you create, you aspire to do justice to yourself, to remake yourself, and there is always the fear that you will expose the very thing that you hoped to transform.

  Rachel Cusk

  Book, Artist, Justice

  "Rachel Cusk: 'Divorce is only darkness'". Interview with Katharine Viner, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.

  Rachel Cusk

  Lying, Orchids, Toxic Waste

  106 Copy quote

• I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest. It was an impulse I knew well, and I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had.

  Rachel Cusk

  Believe, Ocean, Moving

  Rachel Cusk (2015). “Outline”, p.39, Random House

  4 Copy quote

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

  Rachel Cusk

  Book, Taken, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• I don't go to church any more, but I think that Catholicism is rather like the brand they use on cattle: I feel so formed in that Catholic mould that I don't think I could adopt any other form of spirituality. I still get feelings of consolation about churches.

  Rachel Cusk

  Thinking, Catholic, Feelings

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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