Quote

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

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
Much
Ireland
Think
Hopeful
Thinking
Clever
Like
American
People
Wish
Moore
Write
Messed
Women
Jennifer
Writing
Heartfelt

More quotes by Anne Enright

Image
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
Image
Resistless change, when powerless to improve, Can only mar.
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
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
Image
If you grow up in Ireland and read books then you really are obliged to attempt your own some time. It is not exactly a choice. I still don't know if I am a writer. Believe me, there are days when I have my doubts.
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
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
I’m really lucky with the people around me. They know me, so they don’t confuse the issues really. They know what a book is and they know who I am and they know the difference between the two.
Anne Enright
Image
I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.
Anne Enright
Image
Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.
Anne Enright
Image
I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.
Anne Enright
Image
I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing.
Anne Enright
Image
My kids are supposed to live till they are one hundred. You don't have to have a perfect house or a perfect relationship with your child or a perfect child, and you yourself do not have to be perfect.
Anne Enright
Image
If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. Its the people who are always on the brink of crisis who dont hit bottom who are in trouble.
Anne Enright
Image
Belief needs something terrible to make it work, I find--blood, nails, a bit of anguish.
Anne Enright
Image
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
Image
Sometimes I will spend two or three days not speaking to anyone outside of the immediate family when they come home, and then I find that I've been emailing like fury. Once you give in to that silence, it's quite nice.
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
Image
I have no place left to live but in my own heart.
Anne Enright
Image
Story is about pulling the reader in and a plot is a more externalized mechanism of revelation. A plot is more antic, more performative, and less intimate. When you're telling a story you're telling it into someone's ear.
Anne Enright