Anne Enright Quotes

Like most creative people I don't fit well into boxes.

It was really weird to have a hit. Of course, we had a certain level of fame in the Pixies, but nothing I had ever done had been mall-kid friendly.

If I scribbled a few words on a cocktail napkin and showed it to my family, they'd proclaim it astonishing and more culturally relevant than the Bible.

I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.

I want to be an artist you cannot categorize at all. You can't put a box around me. You can't put anything around me.

I'm against fashionable thinking.

I hate the idea that I have to represent any particular section of society; I just write good telly, that's all.

Art school had taught me it was far better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.

I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it?

The past is full of examples of renegade writers who were overlooked in their time not only because their work didn't fit neatly into potted categories but also because they avoided the self-promotional efforts of their peers.

I think most people have creative ideas and have very strange, unorthodox impulses of things that they can do with their lives. I've had many of these over the years, but I decided the more important question was, 'When did I start calling this art?'

I don't know if I would qualify as mainstream. I think I have managed to function pretty successfully on the fringes of the music world and have been able to play exactly what I have wanted the way I have wanted.

It's what I do well - I write about things that make people uncomfortable. That's probably the only thing I do better than my peers.

I have no models in Japanese literature. I created my own style, my own way.

I wouldn't call my work Modernist. I would rust if I try to think about labels. I'd feel like the Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz.'

We're all so mauled by information, but it's recycled information. We need to shut it out. So, you've got to get bizarre. This is an artist's purpose - to break away from the recycled. Performance art can do that.

I've never had any problem with crazy people. I like crazy people; I probably am a crazy person myself.

The absurdist stuff wasn't terribly popular at the time I was doing it.

It's very hard to say I'm surrealist. It's like saying I'm poetic. It's not something you want necessarily to be aware of.

My shaven head is my way of saying 'I wont take no for an answer,' it is my way of saying 'I believe in my creativity and artistry.'

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.

It's a funny habit to write encyclopedia entries. It's not a mass taste.

It would be awesome to stay popular, but if I was only an underground artist, I would be okay with that.

I have never written out of a desire to be controversial.

I don't think there's any topic a writer should feel afraid of tackling just because it has already been discussed. If you feel you have a fresh perspective and an understanding of a certain emotional truth, it's always worth writing.