Honest criticism, I suppose, has its place. But honest writing is infinitely more valuable.
Rachel CuskA creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire to write - could almost be considered meaningless.
Rachel CuskIn domestic life the woman's value is inherent, unquantifiable; at home she exchanges proven values for mythological ones. She "wants" to be at home, and because she is a woman she's allowed to want it. This desire is her mystique, it is both what enables her to domesticate herself and what disempowers her.
Rachel CuskThere is a slovenly disrespect for truth and reality that has infected and cross-infected the arts; the values of entertainment are relentlessly in the ascendant, to the extent that it becomes virtually impossible to write a naturalistic fictional sentence without feeling that the fabric of that sentence is already compromised.
Rachel Cusk