Rachel Kushner Quotes
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I like to read novels where the author seems knowledgeable, like someone you know you could walk calmly next to through a complicated situation, and he or she would be alive to its meaning and ironies. And you wouldn't even have to mention them out loud to each other.
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I knew that I wanted to write about a very young woman because I wanted to see the eyes of the art world in a fresh or even slightly naive way. Because there's something very honest about entering a room and not having a read on everyone there.
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Proust is a huge author for me.
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I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience.
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The art world is filled with vibrancy.
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Citizenship and ethnicity can become, in certain contexts, restrictive, and perhaps that's one reason I was interested in people who feel compelled to mask their origins and thereby circumvent the restrictions.
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I think character is very much a product of where you live, who you are, what is happening in that time of your life, and I'm interested in those pressures, those forces. A political context, a social context, really determines if not who people are then how they treat one another and what they say, how they speak.
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I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.
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Publishing is not my world.
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I was really inspired by these larger-than-life female artists like Lee Bontecou and Eva Hesse and Yvonne Rainier and the incredible Lynda Benglis. There were many women who were really driven and became successful, who were part of essential paradigm shifts, despite the fact that the art world was still dominated by men.
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I got all my politics and culture and my sense of the great wide world of adults from 'Mad Magazine.' But all other comic books literally gave me a headache.
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I suppose I am interested in women plus anonymity plus disappearance.
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I spent a huge amount of time by myself. I daydreamed and learned how to be alone and not be lonely.
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One is sometimes meant to reassure the reader that she's qualified to write about a certain topic.
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I have enormous respect for people who are gifted mechanics.
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My parents were hippies.
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I think that when the social stakes for people are higher, how you present yourself may sometimes feel like it's going to inform your destiny. Because if other people regard you in a certain way, they'll want to help you, and you will end up having a career.
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Even if it happened in real life - and oftentimes, especially if it happened in real life - it might not work in fiction.
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If a writer is always trying to keep a narrator emitting a tone of complete knowingness, it can become false.
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I don't believe in the model of pure inspiration. All of my creative work stems from a dialogue with others.
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Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.
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L.A. is a great place to write because you have a lot of space. I have a big office at home, I can leave the doors open. Flowers bloom all year. But it's unglamorous in all the right ways.
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I know what it's like to go very fast on motorcycles. Those moments, they stay with you.
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I try to show ugliness, but with compassion for the people who commit ugly acts.