Canadian - Novelist | February 8, 1967 -
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.
Rachel Cusk
LifeRomanticDoingAdmireNever
There's this really good line in 'Women in Love' where Ursula says, 'I always thought it was a sin to be unhappy.' And actually I think that's very common, it's what a lot of people feel - that you have an obligation to life to be happy if you can.
LifeLoveGoodWomenHappyPeople
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.
FamilyTruthGreatTimeMeYou
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.
SmileGoodMotherFoolRealityWine
Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.
TruthFeelingsOwnMothersWould
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.
ChildrenStoryResolutionWillRaise
You could time a suburban story by your watch: it lasts as long as it takes a small furry animal that's lonely to find friends, or a small furry animal that's lost to find its parents; it lasts as long as a quick avowal of love; it lasts precisely as long as the average parent is disposed on a Tuesday night to spend reading aloud to children.
LoveChildrenTimeAnimalParents
How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?
WorldBecomeLittleMothersSense
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.
MotherWorldLanguageLearnTongue
We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.
DeathTryingBornSightBirthCatch
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.
HopeSurviveEncouragementProve
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.
GoodHopeYouToxicLovelyNasty
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