To be optimistic about something that is absolutely unknown to you is unfounded. — Rachel Cusk About Copy Share Image
Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people. — Rachel Cusk Explained Copy Share Image
It seems to me that 'women's writing' by nature would not seek equivalence in the male world. It would be a writing… — Rachel Cusk Deny Copy Share Image
Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable. — Rachel Cusk Criticism Copy Share Image
I think a lot of artists no longer want to participate in or be associated with narrative because of its corruptedness in… — Rachel Cusk Art Copy Share Image
Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude. — Rachel Cusk Dangerous Copy Share Image
A book is not an example of 'women's writing' simply because it is written by a woman. Writing may become 'women's writing'… — Rachel Cusk Because Copy Share Image
“At the time, he had got rid of her so efficiently and so suavely that she had felt almost reassured even as… — Rachel Cusk Heart Copy Share Image
“the way I used to turn the pages of a book to find out what happens in the final chapter” — Rachel Cusk Book Copy Share Image
My children are living, thinking human beings. It isn't in my power to regret them, for they belong to themselves. — Rachel Cusk Children Copy Share Image
An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were; that wherever the proposition might first… — Rachel Cusk Being Copy Share Image
Shame is something you'll find a lot of - particularly Catholic - girls feel about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their… — Rachel Cusk Body Copy Share Image
“What she couldn’t stand, she said, was pretence of any kind, especially the pretence of desire, wherein someone feigned the need to… — Rachel Cusk Desire Copy Share Image
I have a romantic conception of the writer's life, and the sort of writer's life that I admire is probably a childless… — Rachel Cusk Admire Copy Share Image
I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same… — Rachel Cusk Actually Copy Share Image
I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at… — Rachel Cusk Believe Copy Share Image
A sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the… — Rachel Cusk Adjustment Copy Share Image
The true self seeks release, not constraint. It doesnt want to be corseted in a sonnet or made to learn a system… — Rachel Cusk Free Copy Share Image
“From the distance of England the Italian cuisine seems to be all things to all people. It does not expect you to… — Rachel Cusk Around the world Copy Share Image
“replied that I wasn’t sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you… — Rachel Cusk Identity Copy Share Image
“the translator says that a sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is… — Rachel Cusk Art Copy Share Image
The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that others are demanding to be given it… — Rachel Cusk Childhood Copy Share Image
“She wondered whether the books she loved consoled her precisely because they were the manifestations of her own isolation.” — Rachel Cusk Books Copy Share Image
Hope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything. — Rachel Cusk Encouragement Copy Share Image
A neighbor is something that belongs to the stable world of home life, the thing that lives next door to you. — Rachel Cusk Belongs Copy Share Image
For me, a novel is always the result of my attempt to impose myself on raw circumstances. It is a concrete form… — Rachel Cusk Always Copy Share Image
A feminist man is a bit like a vegetarian: it's the humanitarian principle he's defending, I suppose. — Rachel Cusk Feminism Copy Share Image
You could time a suburban story by your watch: it lasts as long as it takes a small furry animal that's lonely… — Rachel Cusk Animal Copy Share Image
If I know somebody is coming 'round, it is incredibly difficult for me to work because I'm waiting for this interruption -… — Rachel Cusk Because Copy Share Image
“If a man had a nasty side to his character, she wanted to get to it immediately and confront it. She didn’t… — Rachel Cusk Confront Copy Share Image
It is expected that a children's story will raise a difficulty and then resolve it: increasingly, this resolution is so prompt and… — Rachel Cusk Adversity Copy Share Image
Human beings have a need, generally, to destroy things. The Freudian principle of civilisation is correct. There's always, always a difference between… — Rachel Cusk Civilisation Copy Share Image
Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what… — Rachel Cusk Black Copy Share Image
In memoir, you have to be particularly careful not to alienate the reader by making the material seem too lived-in. It mustn't… — Rachel Cusk Alienate Copy Share Image
A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they… — Rachel Cusk Ability Copy Share Image
I don't really believe in stories, only in the people who tell them. — Rachel Cusk Believe Copy Share Image
What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer? — Rachel Cusk Jobs Copy Share Image
People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them. — Rachel Cusk Aware Copy Share Image
