Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

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

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

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.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

I was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually.

Rachel Kushner
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
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
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
Rachel Kushner

I am not a sun person at all. I think it's a cancerous poison and I don't want it touching me.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

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
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
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
Rachel Kushner

Citizenship and ethnicity can become, in certain contexts, restrictive, and perhaps that's one reason I was interested in people who feel compelled to mask their origins and thereby circumvent the restrictions.

Rachel Kushner
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
Rachel Kushner

Prayer is so complicated.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

One is sometimes meant to reassure the reader that she's qualified to write about a certain topic.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

The 1970s seemed particularly playful. People were trying to make work that couldn't be sold.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

Painting was a problem - you produce a thing, and then you sell it and get money, and that was quickly considered totally uncool.

Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner

I have never liked the 'Been there done that' thing... You hear that all the time from people, and I think it's just based on pure insecurity... Each person is going to have their own unique take on something.

Rachel Kushner
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.