Quote

In domestic life the woman's value is inherent, unquantifiable at home she exchanges proven values for mythological ones. She wants to be at home, and because she is a woman she's allowed to want it. This desire is her mystique, it is both what enables her to domesticate herself and what disempowers her.

Rachel Cusk

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Rachel Cusk
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Value
Mythological
Ones
Exchanges
Wants
Mystique
Values
Enables
Woman
Domestic
Desire
Proven
Home
Inherent
Life
Allowed
Domesticate

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Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself - and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good - but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath.
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Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.
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An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were that wherever the proposition might first have come from, the unacceptability of the female body has been disseminated culturally.
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The creativity of childhood was often surrendered amid feelings of unworthiness. So the idea that ­others are demanding to be given it back - to be taught - is disturbing.
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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.
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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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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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I don't really believe in stories, only in the people who tell them.
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A feminist man is a bit like a vegetarian: it's the humanitarian principle he's defending, I suppose.
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The true self seeks release, not constraint. It doesnt want to be corseted in a sonnet or made to learn a system of musical notations. It wants liberation, which is why very often it fastens on the novel, for the novel seems spacious, undefined, free.
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It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiasticall y they drive you to your own destruction.
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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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What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?
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