A biography for Rachel Kushnerhasn’t been written yet.
“Flamethrowers have been used by many armies in many wars, including by American Marines in Korea and Vietnam. They cause horrific deaths and are thus a serious public-relations liability. The U.S. military apparently phased them out in 1978.”
“I don't believe in the model of pure inspiration. All of my creative work stems from a dialogue with others.”
“The 1970s seemed particularly playful. People were trying to make work that couldn't be sold.”
“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.”
“Publishing is not my world.”
“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.”
“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.”
“All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Lonzi said. And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulders like a stinking vulture, he said, we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom.”
“For me, everything about the telling is guided by tone. It's a bit mysterious; it's either there, or it isn't.”
“When the art world is done wrong, a reader's faith is lost and possibly not recuperable.”
“I don't like the info-dump, as it's known.”
“Prayer is so complicated.”
“I had a Stuart Davis poster growing up.”
“I'm very interested in the idea of a large group of people who come together quite suddenly, but not illogically, for reasons that could not have been anticipated.”
“I have enormous respect for people who are gifted mechanics.”
“Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics.”
“I am occasionally enraptured by Western landscape. But I don't identify that state of mind as having to do with my own origins, having grown up in the West, although I certainly crisscrossed Nevada countless times growing up, and then as a young adult, in cars and on motorcycles.”
“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.”
“The interaction between the two matters, but to me, each doesn't really exist independently of the other, so I'm not ever faced with a situation where the tone is wrong for the story, or the story wrong for the tone. They are two parts of one thing.”
“I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience.”