Rachel Kushner

Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.

— Rachel Kushner

People who want their love easy don't really want love.

— Rachel Kushner

Authenticity is too big a subject to just toss in with the question about the photographs!

— Rachel Kushner

“She smiled at him like they were about to rob a bank together.”

— Rachel Kushner

I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way.

— Rachel Kushner

At a certain age just being around particular people is an event.

— Rachel Kushner

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.

— Rachel Kushner

Art breathes into life a surplus that is both vital and extraordinary.

— Rachel Kushner

Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in…

— Rachel Kushner

In short, I'm pretty suspicious of the idea that there's a real and true and authentic world, and then a bunch of…

— Rachel Kushner

“She believed that people are born every minute of their lives, and what they are in each of those minutes is what…

— Rachel Kushner

When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe…

— Rachel Kushner

I'm releasing myself from the responsibility of claiming to know when something is good and when it isn't.

— Rachel Kushner

One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who…

— Rachel Kushner

The desire for love is universal but that has never meant it’s worthy of respect. It’s not admirable to want love, it…

— Rachel Kushner

I don't quite see the 20th century as one of chaos. But I believe in certain inevitable outcomes of a materialist nature.

— Rachel Kushner

“But since you bring it up, Didier, you know what I think of language? That it’s a fake horizon and there’s something…

— Rachel Kushner

I don't write listening to music, and in a way it seems silly that any writer should have to explain why not,…

— Rachel Kushner

I had been thinking about rubber all along. Like as the novel's element, or base material. A lot of artists in the…

— Rachel Kushner

“All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Lonzi said. And when we feel pessimism…

— Rachel Kushner

“Ski racing was drawing in time, I said to Sandro. I finally had someone listening who wanted to understand: the two things…

— Rachel Kushner

“(Later, Giddle's response when I told her I was in love: "Oh God, I'm so sorry. Love is awful. It ruins every…

— Rachel Kushner

I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,'_ 'tender' or 'universal.' But to the real…

— Rachel Kushner

I do not enjoy the promotional side of being a writer, to be blunt about it. Even with the little amount that…

— Rachel Kushner

As to the "traditional filler of twenty-first century realist fiction," maybe that is something I avoid. I don't relate to standard psychologizing…

— Rachel Kushner

While it might be true that our reality would suggest that more writers would address these elemental issues of modern life -…

— Rachel Kushner

I do study Marcel Proust, for multiple technical virtuosities but also his swerve, as you say, between characters and in scenes. Certain…

— Rachel Kushner

“A blend of good and bad characterized all humans, and to pretend to sort that out was an insult to human complexity.…

— Rachel Kushner

It was not the case that one thing morphed into another, child into woman. You remained the person you were before things…

— Rachel Kushner

I'm happy to be a woman but much of it was learned over the course of life. Really thudded into me. You…

— Rachel Kushner

“Documenting life as it happened seemed like a way of not experiencing it. As if posing for photographs, or focusing on what…

— Rachel Kushner

“The woman in the film drinks in a bar. She's in hair curlers, a chiffon headscarf tied over them like a tarp…

— Rachel Kushner

“When I was twelve, Flip came through Reno and gave out autographs at a casino. I didn't have a glossy photo for…

— Rachel Kushner

“We talked about the speed trials, which were starting today. I said I was running in them, but not that it was…

— Rachel Kushner

“We seemed to share certain ideas about what happens in childhood, when you have to place yourself under the sign of your…

— Rachel Kushner

I don't really see art as structured by logic.

— Rachel Kushner

“...his ridiculousness was a form of vitality.”

— Rachel Kushner

There is no real appeal for me in an image of a woman on a motorcycle.

— Rachel Kushner

People are complicated. Personally I don't go in for puritanical people.

— Rachel Kushner

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

— Rachel Kushner