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" Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics. "
Rachel Kushner
Art
Play
Meanings
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" I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse. "
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" I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way. "
Rachel Kushner
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Very
" When I see things in the world that leap out at me, I want to make use of them in fiction. Maybe every writer does that. It just depends on what you claim or appropriate as yours. "
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" 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. "
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Doing
Feeling
Writing
" I know a little bit about motorcycles and motorcycle riding. "
Rachel Kushner
Know
Riding
Motorcycle
" I spent ten years riding motorcycles. "
Rachel Kushner
Spent
Ten
Ten Years
" A historical event represents the best and the worst of that moment. "
Rachel Kushner
Worst
Historical
Moment
" I try to show ugliness, but with compassion for the people who commit ugly acts. "
Rachel Kushner
Who
Ugly
Try
" Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance. "
Rachel Kushner
Piano
Music
Cuban
" A lot of politics in art is just institutional critique, which, in my opinion, is not all that political. "
Rachel Kushner
Art
Just
Opinion
" 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
Growing Up
Mind
Young
" I guess I'm not really fond of just chit-chatting. I want to learn something and have an experience. "
Rachel Kushner
Experience
Want
Something
" 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
Speak
Art
Listen
" When one is the type of writer who cares about the meaning of the historically specific setting, the history itself is not something that I would call backdrop. It's not window dressing for a timeless relationship about love and betrayal. For me, the setting and the specific history are active co-agents with me in trying to form the novel. "
Rachel Kushner
Relationship
Window
History
" It's through engagement with the world, and not separation from it, that something with meaning gets produced. "
Rachel Kushner
Separation
World
Through
" At home, I dedicate occasional whole days to reading as if I'm a convalescent. The ideal place for this is the bath, where the body floats free. Books go a little wavy, but they're mine, so who cares. "
Rachel Kushner
Bath
Place
Reading
" I have crashed on a motorcycle that was going at 140mph, so I know what it feels like. "
Rachel Kushner
Know
Going
Feels
" I begin a book with imagery, more than I do with an idea or a character. Some kind of poetic image. "
Rachel Kushner
Some
Book
More
" Art is something special because it can come up with a way of approaching the truth that is a little to the side. "
Rachel Kushner
Truth
Art
Because
" I spent a huge amount of time by myself. I daydreamed and learned how to be alone and not be lonely. "
Rachel Kushner
How
Spent
Myself
" 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. "
Rachel Kushner
Marines
Military
Serious
" 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
People
Way
Childhood
" 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
Everything
Knowing
Observe
" From 'Midnight Cowboy' to 'Taxi Driver' is a brief era whose grit, beauty, and violence has been quite mythologized. "
Rachel Kushner
Grit
Cowboy
Beauty