Writerly Quotes from “Transit.” #TuesdayBookBlog #amreading #writing

I recently finished reading Rachel Cusk’s “Transit.” It was compulsively readable (I finished it in two sittings), and such an interesting novel, not only for how the story is structured and told, but also for the density of insights revealed in the slender volume. Rusk’s Giller Prize shortlist nomination is certainly well-deserved.

The few quotes I’ll share are on writers and writing, of which there was some reflection in the book. Maybe you’ll see a bit (or who knows, maybe a lot) of your own writerly experience here.

(All quotes from: Cusk, R. Transit. HaperCollins Ltd. 2017.)

On writers:

“Any writer who denied the childish element of revenge in what they did was, as far as he was concerned, a liar. Writing was just a way of taking justice in your own hands. If you wanted the proof, all you had to do was look at the people who had something to fear from your honesty.” [74]

On writers & family:

” ‘When I told my mother I’d written a book,’ he said, ‘the first thing she said was, ‘You always were a difficult child.” […] For a long time she had refused to discuss it, the writing; she felt he’s stolen something from her, not so much the facts of their shared story as the ownership of it.” [74-75]

On writing:

“When he wrote his book, he said, what he desired was to express himself in a way that was free of shame. One source of that shame was other people’s knowledge of him: yet what they knew was not the truth. The truth, he realised, was something he assiduously hid from others. When he wrote his book it was this desire to be free of shame that drove him on. He wrote it in the belief that he was addressing someone who didn’t know him at all, and who therefore he didn’t have to be embarrassed in front of. That person was effectively himself.” [82]