Quote

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

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
Telling
Antics
Reader
Revelation
Story
Pulling
Less
Mechanism
Someone
Revelations
Stories
Plot
Intimate
Performative
Ears
Externalized

More quotes by Anne Enright

Image
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
Image
I never wanted to be mainstream as a writer, but look at what's happened.
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'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
I think young children in the Western middle classes are objects of incredible anxiety.
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
I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.
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
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
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 truth. The dead want nothing else. It is the only thing that they require.
Anne Enright
Image
A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.
Anne Enright
Image
Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.
Anne Enright
Image
A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.
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
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
I write anywhere - when I have an idea it’s hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn’t be disturbed, it really filled my day.
Anne Enright
Image
I am interested in silences
Anne Enright
Image
Try to be accurate about stuff.
Anne Enright
Image
I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.
Anne Enright