Quote

People think motherhood involves a lot of domestic labor, and it doesn't. It involves being nice to your children as often as possible. That's part of my trick. I don't have that anxiety about meeting their needs.

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
Part
Tricks
Children
Meetings
Needs
Anxiety
Think
Labor
Domestic
Thinking
Nice
Involves
People
Possible
Trick
Often
Motherhood
Doesn
Meeting

More quotes by Anne Enright

Image
I think young children in the Western middle classes are objects of incredible anxiety.
Anne Enright
Image
I have a small room to write in. One wall is completely covered in books. And I face the window with the curtain closed to stop the light hitting the computer.
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
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
A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.
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 have no place left to live but in my own heart.
Anne Enright
Image
Belief needs something terrible to make it work, I find--blood, nails, a bit of anguish.
Anne Enright
Image
I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.
Anne Enright
Image
We have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing we have forgotten how abjectly the body welcomes a formal touch.
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
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
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
In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from.
Anne Enright
Image
There is nothing as tentative as an old woman's touch as loving or as horrible.
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
God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.
Anne Enright
Image
Only bad writers think that their work is really good.
Anne Enright
Image
Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.
Anne Enright
Image
Here we go again. Always a few drinks, but sometimes even sober, we play the unhappiness game endlessly round and round. Ding dong. Tighter and tighter. On and on. Push me pull you. Come here and i'll tell you how much i hate you. Hang on a minute while i leave you. All the while we know we are missing the point, whatever the point used to be.
Anne Enright