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A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.

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
Judged
Experienced
Novel
Written

More quotes by Anne Enright

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I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.
Anne Enright
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There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest.
Anne Enright
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There are little thoughts in your head that can grow until they eat your entire mind. Just tiny little thoughts--they are like a cancer, there is no telling what triggers the spread, or who will be struck, and why some get it and others are spared.
Anne Enright
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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
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I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.
Anne Enright
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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
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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
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A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.
Anne Enright
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I think young children in the Western middle classes are objects of incredible anxiety.
Anne Enright
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I am interested in silences
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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I never wanted to be mainstream as a writer, but look at what's happened.
Anne Enright
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Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.
Anne Enright
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I think it’s very important to write a demythologized woman character. My characters are flawed. They are no better than they should be.
Anne Enright
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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
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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
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I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.
Anne Enright
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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
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There are about as many ways to be dead as there are to be alive. People linger in different ways, both publicly and privately.
Anne Enright
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I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.
Anne Enright