Rachel CuskThere is always shame in the creation of an expressive work, whether it's a book or a clay pot. Every artist worries about how they will be seen by others through their work. When… ▶361HopeReading
Rachel CuskI remain fascinated by where you go as a woman once you are a mother, and if you ever come back.351Reflection
Rachel CuskI 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 a… ▶374Thought
Rachel CuskHow can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one?341Humanity
Rachel CuskI have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approac… ▶342Life
Rachel CuskAn 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… ▶364Love
Rachel CuskIt is living, not thinking, as a feminist that has become the challenge. ✨ Rachel Cusk: 'Divorce is only darkness'. Interview with Katharine Viner, www.theguardian… ▶375LifeThought
Rachel CuskThe woman who thinks she can choose femininity, can toy with it like the social drinker toys with wine - well, she's asking for it, asking to be undone, devoured, asking to spend … ▶343LifeThoughtTime
Rachel CuskEvery time I write a book, I've probably taken five years off my life.322LifeReadingTime
Rachel CuskChristianity has kept itself going for centuries on hope alone, and has perpetrated all manner of naughtiness in the meantime.3610HopeTime
Rachel CuskChildhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity.3610Politics
Rachel CuskWe who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.327Death
Rachel CuskFeminism remains something that needs to be explained to people. ✨ Mum's the word. Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2003.316Humanity
Rachel CuskThere 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 ob… ▶339Humanity
Rachel CuskAs 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. 306Truth
Rachel CuskA creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire … ▶306PhilosophyReadingReflection
Rachel CuskHope is one of those no-win-no-fee things, and although it needs some encouragement to survive, its existence doesn't necessarily prove anything.262HopeLife
Rachel CuskFor me, a novel is always the result of my attempt to impose myself on raw circumstances. It is a concrete form of lived experience. ✨ Keeping it in the family by Rachel Cus… ▶273LifeReading
Rachel CuskA feminist man is a bit like a vegetarian: it's the humanitarian principle he's defending, I suppose. ✨ Rachel Cusk (2012). Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation, p.13, Fabe… ▶273Humanity
Rachel CuskThe 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 con… ▶329PhilosophyReading
Rachel CuskTo become a mother is to learn a whole language - to relearn it, perhaps, as it was the tongue to which we were born - and hence gain entrance to a forgotten world of comprehensio… ▶242Reflection
Rachel CuskThe 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a jo… ▶3110HumorTruth
Rachel CuskIn 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'… ▶243LifePolitics
Rachel CuskAs it stands, motherhood is a sort of wilderness through which each woman hacks her way, part martyr, part pioneer; a turn of events from which some women derive feelings of heroi… ▶3110Life
Rachel CuskI absolutely don't dislike children - I would choose their company over adult company any time. ✨ Rachel Cusk: A fine contempt. Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.c… ▶266Time
Rachel CuskThe reaction to 'Aftermath' has been far worse than to 'A Life's Work,' yet I find I'm perhaps a little less touched by it. In both cases, I've coped artistically by believing the… ▶278LifeReading
Rachel CuskI'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying.245Life
Rachel CuskYou 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 par… ▶191LoveReadingTime
Rachel CuskModern morality is all about perception.235Reading
Rachel CuskIt 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. ✨ Rac… ▶181HumanityReading
