How can there be so many mothers in the world but so little sense of what it might be to become one? Rachel Cusk More Quotes by Rachel Cusk More Quotes From Rachel Cusk The 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 criticisms weren't right. They upset me, but they didn't challenge my understanding of how to write, nor of how morality functions in literature. Rachel Cusk understanding writing believe I think a lot of artists no longer want to participate in or be associated with narrative because of its corruptedness in contemporary culture. Rachel Cusk artist culture thinking Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others. Rachel Cusk divorce might reality 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. Rachel Cusk contemporary-fiction writing needs There is a slovenly disrespect for truth and reality that has infected and cross-infected the arts; the values of entertainment are relentlessly in the ascendant, to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to write a naturalistic fictional sentence without feeling that the fabric of that sentence is already compromised. Rachel Cusk writing reality art A neighbor is something that belongs to the stable world of home life, the thing that lives next door to you. Rachel Cusk home doors world If I know somebody is coming 'round, it is incredibly difficult for me to work because I'm waiting for this interruption - even the children's comings and goings are interruptions. Cake-making is a good way of coming out of that space. Rachel Cusk good me waiting work I sometimes feel that the world is a very uncivilised place where it is meant to be at its most civilised. Where it's meant to be intellectual or artistic or compassionate, it isn't, and that makes me very angry. Rachel Cusk feel me angry world It's a taboo that comes back over and over, to suggest that women can feel divided - that you can love your child and want to do everything for it, and at the same time want to put it away from you and reclaim something of yourself. Rachel Cusk you women time love The old world of England was picturesque and safe in a way that L.A. wasn't, but it was so amazingly socially cruel. I had never experienced that in America - never in school, nowhere. Rachel Cusk never way world school I'm particularly drawn to actors in their own little drama. I find it's that area I'm very alive to. And I don't encounter it that often. You have to be far from civilization, you have to be far from New York or London to find people who do that. Rachel Cusk new own you people I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really thought, 'Actually, this is a valid pastime.' Rachel Cusk me you time people