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Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared. It brings you into a new relationship with the fact of your own existence, a relationship in which one may be rendered helpless.

Rachel Cusk

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Rachel Cusk
Age: 58
Born: 1967
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Like
Events
Relationship
Rendered
Impossible
Parenthood
Existence
Helpless
Fact
Event
Death
Nearly
Facts
Brings
May
Prepared

More quotes by Rachel Cusk

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Hope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything.
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We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.
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Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.
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The anorexic body is held in the grip of will alone its meaning is far from stable. What it says - 'Notice me, feed me, mother me' - is not what it means, for such attentions constitute an agonising test of that will, and also threaten to return the body to the dreaded 'normality' it has been such ecstasy to escape.
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If love is what is held to make us immortal, hatred is the reverse.
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A sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal.
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Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others.
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It's a pretty brutal process, having a baby.
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I don't go to church any more, but I think that Catholicism is rather like the brand they use on cattle: I feel so formed in that Catholic mould that I don't think I could adopt any other form of spirituality. I still get feelings of consolation about churches.
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Even if they knew the truth of their own feelings, most mothers would be socially and emotionally incapable of revealing it.
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There are certain types of slightly hysterical human characters who, rather than creating, walk around with a sense of their own potential - it's as if they themselves were art objects. They feel as if their lives are written narratives, or pieces of music.
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I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.
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Modern morality is all about perception.
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As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.
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You could time a suburban story by your watch: it lasts as long as it takes a small furry animal that's lonely to find friends, or a small furry animal that's lost to find its parents it lasts as long as a quick avowal of love it lasts precisely as long as the average parent is disposed on a Tuesday night to spend reading aloud to children.
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The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.
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Human beings have a need, generally, to destroy things. The Freudian principle of civilisation is correct. There's always, always a difference between the family image and the reality.
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Every time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.
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Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people.
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What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?
Rachel Cusk