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For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

Rachel Kushner

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Rachel Kushner
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Eugene
Oregon
Places
Open
Truth
Things
Life
Cohere
Cracks

More quotes by Rachel Kushner

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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
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I shy away from plot structure that depends on the characters behaving in ways that are going to eventually be explained by their childhood, or by some recent trauma or event. People are incredibly complicated. Who knows why they are the way they are?
Rachel Kushner
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I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way.
Rachel Kushner
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My natural orientation has never been among a community of writers, really. For some reason my social world has always been in the art world.
Rachel Kushner
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In short, I'm pretty suspicious of the idea that there's a real and true and authentic world, and then a bunch of false ones.
Rachel Kushner
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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
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To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.
Rachel Kushner
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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
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The kids I knew growing up who worked on bikes all loved the smell of gas. It is the liquid agent for speed.
Rachel Kushner
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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
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Motorcycles aren't about gaining agency, I don't think.
Rachel Kushner
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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
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I am interested in risk, in art as well as in the realm of politics.
Rachel Kushner
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I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.
Rachel Kushner
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A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious.
Rachel Kushner
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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.
Rachel Kushner
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I don't really have those kinds of intentions when I write a scene. I try to follow the internal logic of the fiction, rather than make an argument or an assertion.
Rachel Kushner
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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.
Rachel Kushner
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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
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I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience.
Rachel Kushner