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Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe.

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
Like
Speak
Took
People
Keep
Second
Able
Name
Wells
Days
Naming
Firsts
Names
Suspect
Well
Nice
Suspects
First
Child
Gave
Children
Secret
Safe

More quotes by 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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I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing.
Anne Enright
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You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.
Anne Enright
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There is nothing as tentative as an old woman's touch as loving or as horrible.
Anne Enright
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Writing is not my problem, it is my solution.
Anne Enright
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Nothing had happened yet in my life except the need to get out of it.
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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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
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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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When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books.
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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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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And, in fact, this is the tale that I would love to write: history is such a romantic place, with its jarveys and urchins and side-buttoned boots. If it would just stay still, I think, and settle down. If it would just stop sliding around in my head.
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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God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.
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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People do not change, they are merely revealed.
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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Resistless change, when powerless to improve, Can only mar.
Anne Enright
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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