I’m hesitant to ever take on the crest of the veteran. So I don’t know who I am to warn the younger writer about the perils to come. I think maybe the most dangerous influence is to think you have all the answers and should be giving counsel. Rachel Kushner Read Quote
I like Baudelaire’s sentences quite a lot. I read and re-read him very often. Rachel Kushner Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Happiness is a mysterious concept. It seems to work best as futurity: at that point I will be happy, et cetera. I feel like I experience small pieces of joy day to day. Rachel Kushner Read Quote
Writing does produce a very unique satisfaction. There are times when I’m writing that it’s frustrating or appalling or difficult, but when it goes well, it goes really well, and there is a feeling of rightness, like I’m doing the thing I was meant to do, almost in a mystical way, like I’m at an appropriate angle to the world. Rachel Kushner Read Quote
My neighbors think I do nothing because I don’t go to a job, which is fine and good. Rachel Kushner Read Quote
From ‘Midnight Cowboy’ to ‘Taxi Driver’ is a brief era whose grit, beauty, and violence has been quite mythologized. Rachel Kushner Read Quote
I love the novels of Didion and Bret Ellis and consider them L.A. writers because they write about L.A. Rachel Kushner Read Quote
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 Read Quote
