Enright Quotes & Sayings

I thought of many an autumn I had known: Seemly autumns approaching deliberately, with amplitude. I thought of wild asters, Michaelmas daisies, mushrooms, leaves idling down the air, two or three at a time, warblers twittering and glittering in every bush ('Confusing fall warblers,' Peterson calls them, and how right he is): the lingering yellow jackets feeding on broken apples; crickets; amber-dappled light; great geese barking down from the north; the seesaw noise that blue jays seem to make more often in the fall. Hoarfrost in the morning, cold stars at night. But slow; the whole thing coming slowly. The way it should be. — Elizabeth Enright

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

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. — Anne Enright

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. — Anne Enright

He dribbled noise. — Anne Enright

A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced. — Anne Enright

Like ghosts the children walked across the lawn on their bare feet. The moon was full. Above the damp grass hung a veil of mist, luminous with moonlight and spangled with fireflies. There was no wind, and the sound of the brook was very distinct, tinkling, splashing, running softly. It made Mona think of an ancient fountain, shaped like a shell, covered with moss, and set in a secluded garden. Something she half remembered, or imagined. — Elizabeth Enright

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

I see her on a Sunday after lunch, and we spend a pleasant afternoon, and when I leave I find she has run through me like water. — Anne Enright

My kids are supposed to live till they are one hundred. You don't have to have a perfect house or a perfect relationship with your child or a perfect child, and you yourself do not have to be perfect. — 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

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

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

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

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. — Anne Enright

He slept like a shout. — 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

All children are beautiful: the thing they do with their eyes that seems so dazzling when they take you all in, or seem to take you all in; it's like being looked at by an alien, or a cat - who knows what they see? — 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

And, in fact, this is the tale that I would love to write: history is such a romantic place, with its jarveys and urchins and side-buttoned boots. If it would just stay still, I think, and settle down. If it would just stop sliding around in my head. — Anne Enright

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. — Anne Enright

All over the city lights were coming on in the purple-blue dusk. The street lights looked delicate and frail, as though they might suddenly float away from their lampposts like balloons. Long twirling ribbons of light, red, green, violet, were festooned about the doorways of drugstores and restaurants
and the famous electric signs of Broadway had come to life with glittering fish, dancing figures, and leaping fountains, all flashing like fire. Everything was beautiful. Up in the deepening sky above the city the first stars appeared white and rare as diamonds. — Elizabeth Enright

Now isn't that nice!' said the old lady. 'If cousins are the right kind, they're best of all: kinder than sisters and brothers, and closer than friends. — Elizabeth Enright

marriage protects your love in the moments of non-love. — Lynn Enright

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

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. — Anne Enright

Did you know that a bee dies after he stings you? And that there's a star called Aldebaran? And that around the tenth of August, any year, you can look up in the sky ant night and see dozens and dozens of shooting stars? — Elizabeth Enright

Already he knew that to overdo a thing is to destroy it. — Elizabeth Enright

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

Mr. Payton was at work on his pipe again, lighting and coaxing it. "They need constant attention, pipes, like babies and guinea hens," he said, and sucked in the smoke. — Elizabeth Enright

I am sorry. I can not invite you home for Christmas because I am Irish and my family is mad — Anne Enright

We do not always like the people we love- we do not always have that choice. — 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

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

And for heaven's sake don't play Bach," ordered Randy. "It's so jumpy for today." Rush — Elizabeth Enright

Someday she planned to paint he ceiling: Blue, with gold stars on it, whole constellations, and a section of the Milky Way. — Elizabeth 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

There were girls at school whose families grew to a robust five or six. There were girls with seven or eight-which was thought a little enthusiastic - and then there were the pathetic ones like me, who had parents that were just helpless to it, and bred as naturally as they might shit. — Anne Enright

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

Teenage Turn-Ons
As played by Robert Pattinson in the Twilight Saga movies, Edward has a certain physical sex appeal thanks in part to the the actor's handsome features. but the appeal in both the movies and the novels has nothing to do with a bad-boy energy that so often translates into sexiness because, really, even when he's full-out vamp, there isn't that much of a bad boy to be found in his character. Curiously, the sexiness of the vampire Edward comes from his safeness. He is the ultimate fantasy man. Described in overly ripe prose, his physical perfection is glorious. He might be a little cool to the touch-but gosh! Look at him! He's youthful, with a perfect body, or the sort of man found in the pages of a million romance novels. And most important, he will do what ever it takes to keep his beloved Bella safe, whether the danger comes from the world or himself. — Laura Enright

And dusk fell because it suited his skin. — Anne Enright

Belief needs something terrible to make it work, I find
blood, nails, a bit of anguish. — Anne Enright

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

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. — Anne Enright

They are surprisingly tall
eight-year-olds. They are surprisingly like real people. Of course your own babies are always real to you, they are all there from the word go, but even strangers' children look like proper people by the aged of eight ... — Anne Enright

There are about as many ways to be dead as there are to be alive. People linger in different ways, both publicly and privately. — Anne Enright

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

Do not sigh, do not weep! — Anne Enright

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

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

Good things must have comparers, I suppose,' said Portia, 'Or how would we knowhow good they are? — Elizabeth Enright

I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since. — Anne Enright

Each golden day was cherished to the full, for one had the feeling that each must be the last. Tomorrow it would be winter. — Elizabeth Enright

No matter how old a person gets, he's never old in spring! — Elizabeth Enright

People think motherhood involves a lot of domestic labor, and it doesn't. It involves being nice to your children as often as possible. That's part of my trick. I don't have that anxiety about meeting their needs. — Anne Enright

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. — Anne Enright

God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same. — Anne Enright

He couldn't stop smelling the air in great, deep, loud sniffs. It was so delicious. It smelled of water, and mud, and maple trees, and autumn. — Elizabeth Enright

Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand. — Anne Enright

One of the reasons I write is I like being surprised — Anne Enright

Having kids is very difficult to do on your own, and it's really crazy difficult to think you're doing it as a team and to find out that you're not actually part of a team. — Anne Enright

I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely. — Anne Enright

The path your words make as you herd them across the page is the only viable route, after all. — Anne Enright

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. — Anne Enright

Churning, baking, spinning and soap-making. In summer, — Elizabeth 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

In Nina Kimbereley's garden the scabiosa flowers were dark as garnet brooches; the nicotiana a veil of tossing crimson stars. Nothing was usual, or a dull color. All was exceptional, designed to be exceptional since it had been planned as the background for a beauty by the beauty. — Elizabeth Enright

Each day the sun shone, the birds lingered, though the trees were turning, purely out of habit, and their rose and yellow and rust looked strange and beautiful above the brilliant green grass. — Elizabeth Enright

There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I'm not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw the line. — Anne Enright

I think I am ready for that. I think I am ready to be met. — Anne Enright

Of course I am bland, she thought. You too would be bland if you grew up with one gas pump in front of the house and nothing else except a view that stretched over half the world. Landscape made me bland, bears poking in the garbage can stunted my individuality, as did plagues of horseflies, permafrost, wild-fire, and the sun setting like a bomb. So much sky makes one bewildered - which is the proper way to be. — Anne Enright

There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest. And the girls will be picked up from school, and dropped off again in the morning. Your eldest daughter can remember her inhaler, and your youngest will take her gym kit with her, and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy to love you. — Anne Enright

Far below were the limestone flats they called the Flaggy Shore; grey rocks under a grey sky, and there were days when the sea was a glittering grey and your eyes could not tell if it was dusk or dawn, your eyes were always adjusting. It was like the rocks took the light and hid it away. And that was the thing about Boolavaun, it was a place that made itself hard to see. — Anne Enright

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

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. — Anne Enright

The summer,' Randy explained. 'I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to walk in the woods noticing everything, and ride my bike on all the roads I never explored. I'm going to fill a pillow with ladies' tobacco so I can smell it in January and remember about August. I'm going to dry a big bunch of pennyroyal so I can break pieces off all winter and think of summer. I'm going to look at everything, and smell everything, and listen to everything so I'll never forget
— Elizabeth Enright

The mullein had finished blooming, and stood up out of the pastures like dusty candelabra. The flowers of Queen Anne's lace had curled up into birds' nests, and the bee balm was covered with little crown-shaped pods. In another month
no, two, maybe
would come the season of the skeletons, when all that was left of the weeds was their brittle architecture. But the time was not yet. The air was warm and bright, the grass was green, and the leaves, and the lazy monarch butterflies were everywhere. — Elizabeth Enright

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. — Anne 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

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. — Anne Enright

But was talking aloud allowed? — Anne Enright

I think acting is revealing to people what it means to be human. — Nick Enright

People do not change, they are merely revealed. — Anne Enright

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

We have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing; we have forgotten how abjectly the body welcomes a formal touch. — Anne Enright

I took my bag, and the suitcase of clothes, and I took the thing he wanted most - a little boy, maybe, as yet unmade; a sturdy little runaround fella, for sitting on his shoulders, and video games down the arcade, and football in the park. — Anne Enright

Self-pity is the hens' besetting sin," remarked Mr. Payton. "Foolish fowl. How they came to achieve anything as perfect as the egg I do not know! I cannot fathom. — Elizabeth Enright

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

I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead — Anne Enright

All I asked for was equality and independence. A rotating chairmanship might have been the answer. — D. J. Enright

It was a delicate business, being the Not Wife. — Anne Enright

An authentic and ingenious account of the ingeniously counterfeit in art and in life. — D. J. Enright

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. — Anne Enright

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

There were eleven months between me and Liam. We came out of her on each other's tails; one after the other, as fast as a gang-bang, as fast as an infidelity. — Anne Enright

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense. — Anne Enright

People whose lives are upside down often read fiction. When you're not sure where you'll end up or how you are going to be, and you're looking for some way forward, fiction is a great friend. — Anne Enright

The truth. The dead want nothing else. It is the only thing that they require. — Anne Enright

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. — Anne Enright

You can not libel the dead, I think, you can only console them. — Anne Enright