Ireta Enright Quotes

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. ~ Anne Enright

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. ~ Anne Enright

Never plan a picnic' Father said. 'Plan a dinner, yes, or a house, or a budget, or an appointment with the dentist, but never, never plan a picnic. ~ Elizabeth Enright

I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true. ~ Anne Enright

And he did. Billy knew that, even if he did not love Greg, even if he had other guys, and other plans for the long term, he would still do this thing. He would help Greg in his last months, or years. And he might resent it but he would not regret it: because this was the thing that was given him to do. ~ Anne Enright

Here we go again. Always a few drinks, but sometimes even sober, we play the unhappiness game; endlessly round and round. Ding dong. Tighter and tighter. On and on. Push me pull you. Come here and i'll tell you how much i hate you. Hang on a minute while i leave you. All the while we know we are missing the point, whatever the point used to be. ~ Anne Enright

I loved the flash of jewels and the luster of satin. In those days women dressed. ~ Elizabeth Enright

Mrs. Schultz believed in beer the way his grandmother believed in the Republican party. ~ Elizabeth Enright

The only way to write a book, I'm fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That's how you write a book. ~ Anne Enright

I have no place left to live but in my own heart. ~ Anne Enright

Has the rain a father ...
What womb brings forth the ice?
- Job: 38 ~ Anne Enright

I think young children in the Western middle classes are objects of incredible anxiety. ~ Anne Enright

A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking ~ Anne Enright

The dishes," [Garnet] said. "Oh, let them stand for once!" cried Mrs. Linden grandly, "we can do them when we come home. This is an important day."

"You're nice," said Garnet, and gave her mother a hug. ~ Elizabeth Enright

It is very hard to trace the effect of words on a life. ~ Anne Enright

When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books. ~ Anne Enright

For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time. ~ Anne Enright

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. ~ Anne Enright

She tried to think of a number she could ring, or a site online, but there was nowhere she could find out what she needed to know. It was all about tomorrow: warm fronts, cold snaps, showers expected. No one ever stopped to describe yesterday's weather. ~ Anne Enright

Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
[Ten rules for writing fiction, The Guardian, 20 February 2010 (with Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, and AL Kennedy)] ~ P.D. James

No woman that I know is capable of leaving her child down for thirty seconds. She can't walk away without making sure that everything is absolutely as secure and safe for her child as can be. ~ Anne Enright

There is nothing as tentative as an old woman's touch; as loving or as horrible. ~ Anne Enright

I wait for the kind of sense that dawn makes, when you have not slept. ~ Anne Enright

The kind of person took milk in his tea on one day and decided against it on the next. ~ Anne Enright

October sunshine bathed the park with such a melting light that it had the dimmed impressive look of a landscape by an old master. ~ Elizabeth Enright

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? ~ Anne Enright

A certain red cardinal sounded like a little bottle being filled up, up, up with some clear liquid. ~ Elizabeth Enright

Garnet woke up early. Before she was quite wide awake she lay with her eyes closed, half afraid to look for fear it might be raining. But even with them closed she knew it was going to be all right because the color behind her lids was clear and rosy and she knew the sunlight lay upon them. And she heard crickets in the meadow, and a fly buzzing against the screen, and somebody whistling outside. So it was all right and she opened her eyes. Oh what a day! She held up her arm in the sunlight; all the little hairs on it glittered like fine gold, and her closed fingers were ember-colored as if there were a light inside them. ~ Elizabeth Enright

Because that is what your babies do, when they grow. They turn around and say it is all your fault. ~ Anne Enright

But was talking aloud allowed? ~ Anne Enright

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. ~ Anne Enright

Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free. ~ Anne Enright

Because wars you can do, and famines you can do and floods are relatively easy, but no one survives when the cook scratches his arse and then decides not to bother washing his hands. ~ Anne Enright

He dribbled noise. ~ Anne Enright

I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing. ~ Anne Enright

Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat. ~ Anne Enright

Her past is behind her, her future is of little concern. She moves towards the grave, at her own speed. ~ Anne Enright

Story is about pulling the reader in and a plot is a more externalized mechanism of revelation. A plot is more antic, more performative, and less intimate. When you're telling a story you're telling it into someone's ear. ~ Anne Enright

Resistless change, when powerless to improve, Can only mar. ~ Anne Enright

I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from. ~ Anne Enright

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. ~ Anne Enright

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. ~ Anne Enright

I never wanted to be mainstream as a writer, but look at what's happened. ~ Anne Enright

Paused in the ineluctable presence of the other, and inhaled. ~ Anne Enright

There are long stretches of time when I don't know what I am doing,
or what I have done - nothing mostly, but sometimes
it would be nice to know what kind of nothing that was ... ~ Anne Enright

He's fine. He's fine,' he kept saying as the baby became ever more cranky and bewildered; screaming in terror if she tried to put him down.
'Why should he be unhappy?' she wanted to say. 'He has had so few days in this world. Why should the unhappiness start here? ~ Anne Enright

In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from. ~ Anne Enright

By lunchtime the valley was lightly coated, like a cake with confectioner's sugar ... there was white fur on the antlers of the iron deer and on the melancholy boughs of the Norway spruce. ~ Elizabeth Enright