Rachel Cusk Quotes

61 quotes in 959 categories

• 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…
• My children are living, thinking human beings. It isn't in my power to regret them, for they belong to themselves.
• The British have always made terrible parents.
• Shame is something you'll find a lot of - particularly Catholic - girls feel about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their diet, about anything…
• 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,…
• Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.
• A feminist man is a bit like a vegetarian: it's the humanitarian principle he's defending, I suppose.
• Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.
• Christianity has kept itself going for centuries on hope alone, and has perpetrated all manner of naughtiness in the meantime.
• Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.
• Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.
• Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people.
• 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.
• Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude.
• 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.
• How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?
• I absolutely don't dislike children - I would choose their company over adult company any time.
• I am a good and interested mother - which has surprised me.
• I don't really believe in stories, only in the people who tell them.
• I have absolutely no concept of work, except for university. But I like to talk to people a lot about their jobs.

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