Quotes from Rachel Kushner

Who knew why they waited, I thought, understanding that I, too, had it in me to wait. To expect change to come from outside, to concentrate on the task of meeting it, waiting to meet it, rather than going out and finding it.

If there was no imperative, it was not love.

Seks is geen ruilhandel, het is een schenkeconomie.

America was supposed to be a place ruined and homogenized by highways, that that was its unique character, crass and vulgar sameness.

He understood that this was the overseer's main skill, to recognize what was within human limits, but just barely. "Within, but just barely" was the optimum calibration, the unit of profit.

But at the same time, Sandro understood that people only tended to allow their own contradictions, and not those of others. It was okay to be murky to yourself, to know you weren't an angel, but other people had to be more cleanly divided into good and bad.

Most unexpected was the sadness that followed on the heels of pleasure, like smoke from an extinguished candle.

Later, Giddle's response when I told her I was in love: "Oh God, I'm so sorry. Love is awful. It ruins every normal thing, everything but itself. It makes you crazy and for nothing, because it's so disappointing. But good luck with that.")

and it is easier to like difficult people when they are leaving, or already gone.

It was only a motorcycle but it felt like a mode of being.

before she was lost to the Tenderloin, north of Fascination, up in the boisterous and dirty hotels that formed the pearls on the chain of her bare life, barer even than mine.

I witnessed doom, though. It was around me. But at the time, I thought the bad luck of other people reaffirmed that I was doing okay.

The three passions," Stanley had said to me that morning, "are love, hate, and ignorance. Ignorance is the strongest.

You have time. Meaning don't use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come. Prepare for its arrival. Don't rush to meet it. Be a conduit. I believed him. I felt this to be true. Some people might consider that passivity but I did not. I considered it living.

I have to arrange my life very carefully. I need eight hours' sleep to work.

I suppose I am interested in women plus anonymity plus disappearance.

My mother told me many stories about her childhood in Cuba. Living there had a profound impact on her and how she regards herself.

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.

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.

It's a cliche, and in a way it's a conservative idea about fiction, but I did learn the hard way that plot does need to dictate the story.

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

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.

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.

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.