Rachel Cusk
Rachel Cusk
Rachel Cusk is a Canadian-born novelist and writer who lives and works in the United Kingdom...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
CountryCanada
forceful ideas literary obviously protection speak suppose within
I have some pretty forceful ideas about the world - obviously I do. But I suppose I can only really speak about them from within the protection of a literary form.
female finest fond hysteria line subject
Female hysteria is a subject I'm very fond of. I always try to bring it in somewhere. For me, it is the finest part of the line between comedy and tragedy.
defending emotion family feature great spoil time truth whereas
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.
example simply women written
A book is not an example of 'women's writing' simply because it is written by a woman. Writing may become 'women's writing' when it could not have been written by a man.
exactly expected forgets prompt raise resolve
It is expected that a children's story will raise a difficulty and then resolve it: increasingly, this resolution is so prompt and so resounding that one forgets what exactly the difficulty was.
amazingly america socially
The old world of England was picturesque and safe in a way that L.A. wasn't, but it was so amazingly socially cruel. I had never experienced that in America - never in school, nowhere.
musical novel seeks seems sonnet system true wants
The true self seeks release, not constraint. It doesn't 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.
aware became born both coming country detached england few immersed later life slightly suppose
I was born abroad, but my parents were both English. Still, those few years of separation, and then coming back to England as an outsider, did give me an ability to see the country in a slightly detached way. I suppose I was made aware of what Englishness actually is because I only became immersed in it later in life.
anorexic brings discredit female machinery power prove public survive time
The anorexic is out to prove how little she needs, how little she can survive on; she is out, in a sense, to discredit her nurturers, while at the same time making a public crisis out of her need for nurture. Such vulnerability and such power: it brings the whole female machinery to a halt.
awe capable certainly childless conception lawrence life possibly romantic sort travelling
I have a romantic conception of the writer's life, and the sort of writer's life that I admire is probably a childless life, possibly a marriageless life, certainly a travelling life - I'm in awe of how much D.H. Lawrence managed to get around. But that's never been something I'm capable of doing.
absolutely
To be optimistic about something that is absolutely unknown to you is unfounded.
almost holding
Writing is a discipline: it's almost all about holding back.
passion writing space
That's writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn't turn up.
motherhood feelings being-a-mother
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.