Author

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.

From Rachel Cusk

I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.

From Rachel Cusk

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.

From Rachel Cusk

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.

From Rachel Cusk

Feminism remains something that needs to be explained to people.

From Rachel Cusk

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.

From Rachel Cusk

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.

From Rachel Cusk

I have absolutely no concept of work, except for university. But I like to talk to people a lot about their jobs.

From Rachel Cusk

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.'

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.

From Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

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