Quote

It is very hard to trace the effect of words on a life.

Anne Enright

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Enright
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: October 11
Author
Essayist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Television Director
Television Producer
Writer
Dublin city
Effect
Effects
Words
Hard
Life
Trace

More quotes by Anne Enright

Image
I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead
Anne Enright
Image
For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.
Anne Enright
Image
Only bad writers think that their work is really good.
Anne Enright
Image
People whose lives are upside down often read fiction. When you're not sure where you'll end up or how you are going to be, and you're looking for some way forward, fiction is a great friend.
Anne Enright
Image
I think you know everything at eight. But is is hidden from you, sealed up, in a way you have to cut yourself open to find.
Anne Enright
Image
When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.
Anne Enright
Image
To be able to have the space to sit down and write has always been my central policy.
Anne Enright
Image
I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?
Anne Enright
Image
When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books.
Anne Enright
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me.
Anne Enright
Image
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
Image
If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.
Anne Enright
Image
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
Image
I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way.
Anne Enright
Image
There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I'm not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw the line.
Anne Enright
Image
One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised
Anne Enright
Image
Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.
Anne Enright