Quotes from Rachel Kushner

I think character is very much a product of where you live, who you are, what is happening in that time of your life, and I'm interested in those pressures, those forces. A political context, a social context, really determines if not who people are then how they treat one another and what they say, how they speak.

It's amazing how life conspires to set you up with what you need.

A novel is not a rant.

Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive for the writer.

Even if it happened in real life - and oftentimes, especially if it happened in real life - it might not work in fiction.

Like most writers, I've read a lot of Hemingway, and I admire him greatly.

My parents were hippies.

I spent a huge amount of time by myself. I daydreamed and learned how to be alone and not be lonely.

Our parents had Ph.D.s, but we were dirty ragamuffin children. I spent a huge amount of time by myself. I daydreamed and learned how to be alone and not be lonely.

Tone is somewhat totalising in that, once I locate it, it tells me what kind of syntax to use, what word choices to make, how much white space to leave on the page, what sentence length, what the rhythmic patterning will be. If I can't find the tone, I sometimes try narrating through the point of view of someone else.

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.

For me, everything about the telling is guided by tone. It's a bit mysterious; it's either there, or it isn't.

If a writer is always trying to keep a narrator emitting a tone of complete knowingness, it can become false.

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

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.

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.

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 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.

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.

Art is like a stock with a decent return for people in finance, and they get to feel like they are involved with culture, spend time with artists, as part of their dividend.

I don't think a woman riding a motorcycle thinks of herself as doing something that has sex appeal. I think she's trying to replicate for herself an experience that she sees men having.

A historical event represents the best and the worst of that moment.

In fiction, there happens to be a long history of creative engagement with marginality, with the very human components of society that others don't want to think about, from writers such as Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud to Genet and Sarrazin and right on up to Norman Mailer.

Telluride has an incredible history and reputation, and I've long known of it as a unique entity that makes a place for writers - one more aspect of this exceptional film festival in the Colorado Alps.