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I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

Anne Enright

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Anne Enright
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: October 11
Author
Essayist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Television Director
Television Producer
Writer
Dublin city
Think
Distinctive
Thinking
Sentences
People
Natural
Find
Many
Writing
Work
Things

More quotes by Anne Enright

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Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.
Anne Enright
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If you try to control it too much, the book is dead. You have to let it fall apart quite early on and let it start doing its own thing. And that takes nerve, not to panic that the book you were going to write is not the book you will have at the end of the day.
Anne Enright
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There's quite a big gap when it comes to that dual identity of mother and child, or even a pregnant woman, or a nursing woman. It kind of begs the question of that very strong Western idea of the individual self.
Anne Enright
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I am a trembling mess from hip to knee. There is a terrible heat, a looseness in my innards that makes me want to dig my fists between my thighs. It is a confusing feeling - somewhere between diarrhoea and sex - this grief that is almost genital.
Anne Enright
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Writing is not my problem, it is my solution.
Anne Enright
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I am interested in silences
Anne Enright
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People do not change, they are merely revealed.
Anne Enright
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I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead
Anne Enright
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Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how real your story is, or how made up: what matters is its necessity.
Anne Enright
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I do not believe in evil- I believe that we are human and fallible, that we things and spoil them in an ordinary way.
Anne Enright
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A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.
Anne Enright
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The truth. The dead want nothing else. It is the only thing that they require.
Anne Enright
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The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.
Anne Enright
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No woman that I know is capable of leaving her child down for thirty seconds. She can't walk away without making sure that everything is absolutely as secure and safe for her child as can be.
Anne Enright
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I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can't.
Anne Enright
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The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.
Anne Enright
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To be able to have the space to sit down and write has always been my central policy.
Anne Enright
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People think motherhood involves a lot of domestic labor, and it doesn't. It involves being nice to your children as often as possible. That's part of my trick. I don't have that anxiety about meeting their needs.
Anne Enright
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We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice.
Anne Enright
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God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.
Anne Enright