“I think men and women are the same. Even as parents, I think we're the...” — Rachel Cusk Quote

I think men and women are the same. Even as parents, I think we're the same. We're just conditioned to think that we're different. Having said that, it's true that motherhood is a particularly vulnerable area. It's an open wound, really. A woman is exposed to being turned into a different kind of person by the experience of motherhood.

For years I had lived in my body half-consciously, ignoring it mostly, dismissing its agendas wherever I could, and forever pressing it into the service of mental conceptions that resulted, almost as a by-product, sometimes in its pleasuring and sometimes in its abuse.

Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who find it easier. I'm afraid I don't have the latest figures to confirm this.

It is expected that a children's story will raise a difficulty and then resolve it: increasingly, this resolution is so prompt and so resounding that one forgets what exactly the difficulty was.

There are universal shapes to which everybody is subconsciously conditioned and to which they can respond if their conscious control does not shut them off.

All the people I know have been conditioned by snobbery.

It's very difficult to just start playing fast in the middle of the year. Guys aren't conditioned for it physically or mentally.

I would like my kids to go to college and be exposed to the real world and to make their own decisions and find their own path instead of sending them somewhere where they would be creatively conditioned for one life path or another.