Rachel Kushner Quotes
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I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse. The art world is filled with vibrancy.
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I steer clear of books with ugly covers. And ones that are touted as 'sweeping,'_ 'tender' or 'universal.' But to the real question of what's inside: I avoid books that seem to conservatively follow stale formulas. I don't read for plot, a story 'about' this or that.
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When I see someone for the first time in a while, and they ask, 'How have you been?' or 'What have you been up to?', it's politeness but a bit of a conversation stopper.
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A historical event represents the best and the worst of that moment.
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We're all performing for someone.
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Growing up, I was not told that there were women's areas of preoccupation or male ones.
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Our parents had Ph.D.s, but we were dirty ragamuffin children. 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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Danny Lyon is one of my favorite photographers.
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I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor.
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It's no secret that Cuba is a typical Latin American culture in that it has a fair amount of homophobia. Homosexuals have been notoriously persecuted under Fidel's government.
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For me, everything about the telling is guided by tone. It's a bit mysterious; it's either there, or it isn't.
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I always collect images, maybe because I was working with historic material - but even if I were working with contemporary material, I would do the same thing. I keep a kind of index of them while I'm working. I find them incredibly useful, not so much to illustrate a time, but to give some sense of the feeling of a time.