Quote

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

Rachel Kushner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rachel Kushner
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Eugene
Oregon
Love
Admirable
Worthy
Meant
Universal
Respect
Desire
Never

More quotes by Rachel Kushner

Image
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.
Rachel Kushner
Image
To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.
Rachel Kushner
Image
Since it's fiction, the book resonates, at least for me, on various levels, some of which intimate ideas about history but none of which have the kind of directly causal reasoning you cite.
Rachel Kushner
Image
I like to think each writer is doing his or her part. Feeding the lake, as Jean Rhys said. And maybe there are different lakes.
Rachel Kushner
Image
I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.
Rachel Kushner
Image
I think art is much more about an engagement with the world, a way of being called upon and recognizing that the world is speaking to you. Which isn't quite solitude, even if you're alone when it happens.
Rachel Kushner
Image
Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive, for the writer.
Rachel Kushner
Image
I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.
Rachel Kushner
Image
In writing novels, you have to believe in yourself or there would be no way to sustain it. But you also have to give good evidence regularly for having that faith in self-either with quality goods or with, at least, good efforts. Working hard will do when inspiration is not forthcoming.
Rachel Kushner
Image
Authenticity is too big a subject to just toss in with the question about the photographs!
Rachel Kushner
Image
Eventually, I decided that if I was going to really write a novel, I couldn't do it in New York City while holding down a job. You need a constant money source to live in New York City unless you're independently wealthy, which I'm not.
Rachel Kushner
Image
The novel is a big space, and a lot can happen. Just think about the parts of your life. How do we account for our own contradictions? The only way to understand them is to let them exist, as truths that indicate something about character. People are built of elements that don't fit together - and the conflict of that is their essential drive.
Rachel Kushner
Image
Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.
Rachel Kushner
Image
And here I arrive at my point. The point is that everyone has a different dream. The point is that it is a grave mistake to assume your dream is in any way shared, that it’s a common dream. Not only is it not shared, not common, there is no reason to assume that other people don’t find you and your dream utterly revolting.
Rachel Kushner
Image
People are complicated. Personally I don't go in for puritanical people.
Rachel Kushner
Image
It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character. Then again, there is a huge gap between me as a person and what I do in the novel.
Rachel Kushner
Image
Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft.
Rachel Kushner
Image
People who want their love easy don't really want love.
Rachel Kushner
Image
I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.
Rachel Kushner
Image
People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You're driven to love them. People who want their love easy don't really want love.
Rachel Kushner