Rachel Kushner Quotes
I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.
Quotes to Explore
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I think having a great idea is vastly overrated. I know it sounds kind of crazy and counterintuitive. I don't think it matters what the idea is, almost. You need great execution.
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I just thought it was unconscionable for the Congress to insert itself into this debate. We are particularly unqualified to make that decision and to intrude ourselves into the lives of this family.
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I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'
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Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.
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I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.
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You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren't able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking.
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To be shapely when you're in the seventh grade is not exactly what everyone's looking for, or they weren't then, as someone was telling me the other day. now, that's like a really great thing to do, to be, but then it wasn't.
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I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.
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A couple of my friends started having babies, and I thought, 'Maybe one day, with the right guy.' I have to find the guy first.
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Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
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That's the great thing about entering a convent: There are things that you simply can't do, so you don't have to worry about them.
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I was never really a Mod. I thought I was more of a beatnik with the brown corduroy jacket, blue jeans, etc. I loved the music Mods liked, and I loved the clothes, but I didn't have any money to spend on them.
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On the weekends, I do the usual parental things, going to the boys' football tournaments or getting out for a hike along the Great Wall.
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I had to write something and couldn't think of a plot, so I decided to write a Cinderella story because it already had a plot! Then, when I thought about Cinderella's character, I realized that she was too much of a goody-two-shoes for me, and I would hate her before I finished ten pages.
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The art world is never going to be popular like the NFL, but more people are buying art and I think that's cushioning, to a great extent, our art-market cycles.
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At one point I thought changing my name might help with privacy, but that was before the Internet.
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Every year, I take 10 of my best friends from high school on a trip. That's kind of my way for saying thanks to them for being so loyal, for keeping me honest, and for just being great friends throughout this craziness.
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It's easier to release an ebook than a print book.
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What I really honestly want is just to be working steadily... I would love to just be on a great TV show and have it run for awhile.
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Everyone has a warped vision of Hollywood and what success in Hollywood is like.
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You can turn the negative around and use it as a motivating force in your lie. One of my biggest desires has always been to prove certain people wrong - to prove to them I can do it despite what they think or say.
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The early years of my life were very, very traumatic. It was scary, because any child knew that death was sort of lurking around Europe as far as Jews were concerned.
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I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.
