Rachel Kushner Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Rachel Kushner:

Tone is somewhat totalising in that, once I locate it, it tells me what kind of syntax to use, what word choices to make, how much white space to leave on the page, what sentence length, what the rhythmic patterning will be. If I can't find the tone, I sometimes try narrating through the point of view of someone else.

I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience.

Rachel Kushner

I try to show ugliness, but with compassion for the people who commit ugly acts.

Rachel Kushner

The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.

Rachel Kushner

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.

Rachel Kushner

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.

Rachel Kushner

My parents were hippies.

Rachel Kushner

A lot of politics in art is just institutional critique, which, in my opinion, is not all that political.

Rachel Kushner

I know there are writers who like to say that every novel is hard, and it doesn't get easier. That may be the case, and I've only written two. But the first, to me, was characterized by an enduring oscillation between perseverance and a profound doubt.

Rachel Kushner

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

I spent a huge amount of time by myself. I daydreamed and learned how to be alone and not be lonely.

Rachel Kushner

I don't read for plot, a story 'about' this or that. There must be some kind of philosophical depth rendered into the language, something happening.

Rachel Kushner

Tone is somewhat totalising in that, once I locate it, it tells me what kind of syntax to use, what word choices to make, how much white space to leave on the page, what sentence length, what the rhythmic patterning will be. If I can't find the tone, I sometimes try narrating through the point of view of someone else.

Rachel Kushner

One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who has a take on everything they observe.

Rachel Kushner

Growing up, I was not told that there were women's areas of preoccupation or male ones.

Rachel Kushner

I'd say it's okay to be political and to be a writer. Those streams can be separate, and they can be connected; for me, they're both. Life is political, and I'm interested in my community and in a lot of issues - some of them American, some global.

Rachel Kushner

I have spent a lot of time in the art world, and I guess I do listen to how people speak. I'm interested in what they say and how they say it.

Rachel Kushner

I write the novels that are possible for me to write, not that ones I think will come across in a certain light.

Rachel Kushner

I don't like the info-dump, as it's known.

Rachel Kushner

I had always wanted to include images in a novel, and with my first book, 'Telex From Cuba,' I made an elaborate website that is basically all images.

Rachel Kushner

Artists are political in the sense that they've subtracted themselves from the structure of the marketplace and are contributing something that's not utilitarian. Even though books get sold, and I get advances, I get to look at society and think for a living.

Rachel Kushner

I usually get up between 7 A.M. and 8 A.M., have coffee, and go right to work. It's really important not to get sidetracked in the morning so I'm still in that dreamy state for my writing.

Rachel Kushner

These women were taking over these former manufacturing warehouses in SoHo and figuring out a way to be fashionable and viable without money. It's hard to imagine a life like that in Manhattan now - there's something romantic about it.

Rachel Kushner

Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.

Rachel Kushner

I have spent a lot of time listening to people who are serving life sentences and getting to know them and the circumstances of their lives. I have never met anyone serving a long prison sentence who had anything close to what I could call a childhood; instead, the upbringings always - always - involve extreme situations of poverty and abuse.

Rachel Kushner

I'm drawn in some strangely natural way to immersing myself in a milieu whose rules I don't understand, where there are things you can't access simply by being intelligent or doing well in school.

Rachel Kushner

There were people in Cuba who truly had substantial things to gain from revolution. There were people who had things to lose in the revolution. I think they're all allowed to have their memories of what happened.

Rachel Kushner

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

Italy in the Seventies seems like a fascinating place.

Rachel Kushner

The Seventies seemed like this really open time. There were a lot of strong women characters deciding what kind of artists they wanted to be.

Rachel Kushner

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

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

I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image.

Rachel Kushner

Prayer is so complicated.

Rachel Kushner

I spent ten years riding motorcycles.

Rachel Kushner

If a writer is always trying to keep a narrator emitting a tone of complete knowingness, it can become false.

Rachel Kushner

I know a little bit about motorcycles and motorcycle riding.

Rachel Kushner