Quotes from Rachel Cusk

so for most people the act of reading symbolised intelligence, quite possibly because in that formative time they had not enjoyed or understood the books that they were obliged to read.

might even be their forgotten suffering at the hands of literary texts that had left behind this residue of respect for books; if, that is, psychoanalysts are to be believed when they say we are unconsciously drawn to the repetition of painful experiences.

More than anything,' he said, 'people dislike being made to feel stupid, and if you arouse those feelings, you do so at your own cost.

Change is also loss, and in that sense a parent can lose a child every day, until you realise that you'd better stop predicting what they're going to become and concentrate on what is right in front of you.

although I've noticed that the people who love children the most often respect them the least.

So much power lies in the ability to see how willing other people are to give it to you.

We are so schooled, he said, in the doctrine of self-acceptance that the idea of refusing to accept yourself becomes quite radical.

As it happened I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even of self-definition – I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another: in fact, if I read something I admired I found myself increasingly disinclined to mention it at all. What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything.

Most people prefer to take care of themselves before they take care of the truth, and then wonder where their talent has disappeared off to.

The problem was, the more complex he allowed his vision of life to become, the further he removed himself from his own capacity to act.

He spoke a refine and formal kind of English, that did not seem wholly natural as though at some point it had been applied to him carefully with a brush, like paint.

When the recorded voice came to the part about the oxygen masks, the hush remained unbroken: no one protested, or spoke up to disagree with this commandment that one should take care of others only after taking care of oneself. Yet I wasn't sure it was altogether true.

It was impossible, I said in response to his question, to give the reasons why the marriage had ended: among other things a marriage is a system of belief, a story, and though it manifests itself in things that are real enough, the impulse that drives it is ultimately mysterious.

t's suggested that the ultimate fulfillment of a conscious being lay not in solitude but in a shared state so intricate and corporative it might almost be said to represent the entwining of two selves. This notion, of the unitary self being broken down, consciousness not as an imprisonment in one's own perceptions but rather as something more intimate and less divided, or universality that could come from shared experience at the highest level.

was a funny idea, writing in a language not your own. It almost makes you feel guilty, she said, the way people feel forced to use English, how much of themselves must get left behind in that transition, like people being told to leave their homes and take only a few essential items with them.

it seems to me as though my wife and I looked at the world through a long lens of preconception, by which we held ourselves at some unbreachable distance from what was around us, a distance that constituted a kind of safety but also created a space for illusion.

And if there's one thing I know it's that writing comes out of tension, tension between what's inside and what's outside.

his mother had explained this anomaly to him by saying that the biological basis of parenthood was essentially antithetical to reason, and as such could be seen as a whole system of inverted logic.

What was soothing, he believed, was the very fact that this oceanic chorus was affixed in no one person, that it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere: he recognised that a lot of people found this idea maddening, but for him the erosion of individuality was also the erosion of the power to hurt.

Only tyrants want power for its own sake, and parenthood is the closest most people get to an opportunity for tyranny. Was I a tyrant, wielding shapeless power without authority? What I felt a lot of the time was a sort of stage fright, the way I imagine inexperienced teachers must feel when they stand at the front of the class looking at a sea of expectant faces.

As far as he knew a problem couldn't be solved simply by infinitely restating it, unless you relied on infinity itself to break certain factors down.

Seu antagonismo tinha a medida exata da sua antiga harmonia, mas enquanto a harmonia havia sido atemporal, sem peso, o antagonismo ocupava espaço e tempo.

But why should they rescue you?' he said. 'There you are, sitting in a castle in the beautiful Italian countryside, with your own room and nobody bothering you and complete freedom to do your work. For most people that is a fantasy!' 'I don't know,' Linda said dully. 'I guess it must mean there's something wrong with me.

we examine least what has formed us the most, and instead find ourselves driven blindly to re-enact it. Maybe it's only in our injuries, he said, that the future can take root.