Anne Enright
I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.Collection: Saint
I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.
There often is a dark secret in books... There is often a gathering sense of dread; there's a gap sometimes in the text from which all kinds of monsters can emerge.
I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way.
I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can't.
I think it's very important to write a demythologized woman character. My characters are flawed. They are no better than they should be.
The writing day can be, in some ways, too short, but it's actually a long series of hours, for months at a time, and there is a stillness there.
In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from.
I've heard people, usually writers, say that no one wrote a great book after winning the Booker, but I honestly did not feel any big pressure. 'The Gathering' did hang over me in that it was darker than I thought at the time.
I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me.
I never wanted to be mainstream as a writer, but look at what's happened.
I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.
If your life just falls apart early on, you can put it together again. It's the people who are always on the brink of crisis who don't hit bottom who are in trouble.
I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.
When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.
For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.
I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.
To be able to have the space to sit down and write has always been my central policy.
I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.
I'm really lucky with the people around me. They know me, so they don't confuse the issues, really. They know what a book is and they know who I am and they know the difference between the two.
I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.
I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.
Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in 'Old Ireland.' It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can't think of anything else for definite.
Recently I read the stories I wrote in my early 20s, to put in a volume. And here is this brittle young woman, writing about marriage as, not the worst thing, but the most boring thing that could happen to a person. Now I think I was wrong. I like to be proven wrong.
I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?
There's no such thing as a life that is not normal, or, there's no such thing as a life that is not abnormal. We all have amazing lives; we all have very dull lives.
If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.
You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.
If you grow up in Ireland and read books then you really are obliged to attempt your own some time. It is not exactly a choice. I still don't know if I am a writer. Believe me, there are days when I have my doubts.
It is very hard to trace the effect of words on a life.
Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe.
There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.
I have a small room to write in. One wall is completely covered in books. And I face the window with the curtain closed to stop the light hitting the computer.
People do not change, they are merely revealed.Collection: People
Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.Collection: Book
We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice.Collection: People
Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.Collection: Writing
Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.Collection: Real
I have no place left to live but in my own heart.Collection: Heart
There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.Collection: Daughter
Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.Collection: Cat
The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.Collection: Book
When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books.Collection: Dream
Writing is not my problem, it is my solution.Collection: Writing
If you try to control it too much, the book is dead. You have to let it fall apart quite early on and let it start doing its own thing. And that takes nerve, not to panic that the book you were going to write is not the book you will have at the end of the day.Collection: Book
A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.Collection: Novel
I am interested in silencesCollection: Silence
I think you know everything at eight. But is is hidden from you, sealed up, in a way you have to cut yourself open to find.Collection: Cutting
There are about as many ways to be dead as there are to be alive. People linger in different ways, both publicly and privately.Collection: People
A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.Collection: Talking