Rachel Cusk Quotes

No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.

When you're too relaxed it's not good to create.

No one would choose to be jerked randomly off task again and again until you have half a dozen things you're trying to get done, all at the same time.

I tend to write in coffee shops and restaurants with friends of mine because if I'm at home, I get distracted by the television or the cats or my husband, or... you know - all of those things that make it easy to procrastinate.

I have no organisational skills. All my energy goes into worry - worrying takes a lot of energy.

I always interrupt work with other work, either in a small way or big way, so that's normal.

I write in cafes, never at home. I cannot focus at home, am forever getting off my chair to do other things. In a cafe, I have to sit still, or I'll look a bit unhinged.

Like everyone, appearing smart during meetings is my top priority. Sometimes this can be difficult if you start daydreaming about your next vacation, your next nap, or bacon.

Sometimes I am glad I am not a philosopher - how would I ever complete a single chain of thought when someone is constantly asking me to do something? I don't think Plato would have been able to write his dialogues if he had a wife who kept bugging him to pass the pita bread.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.

My secret is simple. I have a very short attention span, and writing lots of things fast appeases that very attention span.

If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean.

The main thing to do is relax and let your talent do the work.

Sure, one can always get the students to relax and be happy - entertained, but although being laid back and relax can also lead to creativity, mostly it means that nothing much gets done.

I don't mind being distracted. I don't want to sit there in utter silence and type. If the phone rings, I usually answer it, speak for a few minutes and return to writing, or go for a walk in and out of the rooms. I don't mind a break.

Working in an office with an array of electronic devices is like trying to get something done at home with half a dozen small children around. The calls for attention are constant.

Some people think they are concentrating when they're merely worrying.

I don't know about other writers, but for myself, to write I must be relatively quiet - it's very difficult to write with the telephone and the doorbell ringing and conversation going on; I'm not that good a writer to write through all that!

I've been in a recording studio enough times to know that it is not the best place to multitask. Doing a couple of takes of a song and running out to check your email to talk to someone about video production really is not good.

Acting and recording an album at the same time, that's not my sport. I could write a movie when my attention was paid to that. But I'm good at one thing at a time.

Many people feel they must multi-task because everybody else is multitasking, but this is partly because they are all interrupting each other so much.

I should be concentrating on writing pages.

A lot of times, people start out with a lot of good ideas, but then they don't execute. They lose the purity of their vision. You end up running around in circles.

If I'm really under pressure to get work done, I can adapt to most situations, but I prefer to be at home, in a comfortable chair, with as few distractions as possible.

If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It's like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention.