Rachel Cusk
Rachel Cusk
Rachel Cusk is a Canadian-born novelist and writer who lives and works in the United Kingdom...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
CountryCanada
forcing intuitive maths pastime people seems subjected thinks
Some people are better at maths than others: no one thinks you can be 'taught' to be a mathematical genius. And no one thinks of teaching, in that context, as a kind of forcing of the will. But there seems to be an idea of writing as an intuitive pastime which is being dishonestly subjected to counterintuitive methods.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
experience exposed men motherhood open true turned vulnerable woman women
I think men and women are the same. Even as parents, I think we're the same. We're just conditioned to think that we're different. Having said that, it's true that motherhood is a particularly vulnerable area. It's an open wound, really. A woman is exposed to being turned into a different kind of person by the experience of motherhood.
condition intangible marriage property remains
The woman who has her being in marriage and motherhood has become part of antithetical reality, revoking property from the woman who remains in a condition of intangible femininity.
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.
creation object public shame
There is always shame in the creation of an object for the public gaze.
meant
I sometimes feel that the world is a very uncivilised place where it is meant to be at its most civilised. Where it's meant to be intellectual or artistic or compassionate, it isn't, and that makes me very angry.
agendas almost forever ignoring lived mental wherever
For years I had lived in my body half-consciously, ignoring it mostly, dismissing its agendas wherever I could, and forever pressing it into the service of mental conceptions that resulted, almost as a by-product, sometimes in its pleasuring and sometimes in its abuse.
women
What compromises women - babies, domesticity, mediocrity - compromises writing even more.
absolutely
To be optimistic about something that is absolutely unknown to you is unfounded.