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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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Rachel Kushner
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Eugene
Oregon
Reason
Really
Orientation
Always
Writers
Never
Among
World
Community
Natural
Social
Art

More quotes by Rachel Kushner

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To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.
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People are complicated. Personally I don't go in for puritanical people.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Motorcycles aren't about gaining agency, I don't think.
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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.
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I don't regard the real and true and authentic as something to claim as a moral high ground.
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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.
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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.
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I didn't think of the narrative as making a judgment. It didn't occur to me the reader would either, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible there would be that risk.
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People who want their love easy don't really want love.
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For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.
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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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Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.
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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.
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I am interested in risk, in art as well as in the realm of politics.
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