Rachel Kushner Quotes

As a storyteller, you have the story that you tell, and you have the way you can tell it, and both are equally important.

A short story is one idea; a novel is a whole soup of them.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.

Listen to great storytellers; slowly, you will learn about voice, timing, tension, structure, climax - all the things you need to tell stories that will capture the imagination of your audience.

Any story that I can consider worth telling is one that you could tell in words.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.

I see myself as a story teller.

I've always written about other artists, or I write my thoughts down, but I've never written a story.

I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.

I'm excited to bring my characters to life in book form.

I think storytelling is a thing of beauty, and also very difficult. It's a craft you have to continue to work at.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

I just try to write entertaining books that are easily identifiable.

No, the thing is, we all love storytelling, and as a writer you get to tell stories all the time.

I like to think of myself as a storyteller.

When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story.

For me, the short story is the depth of a novel, the breadth of a poem, and, as you come to the last few paragraphs, the experience of surprise.

My novels are all ideas.

I want to tell a story and shape it all the way through to the end.

I always like to tell a story.

My fiction-writing DNA shows in how I think about prose, how I think about the page, how I think nonfiction stories should work. And every piece of nonfiction I write, I want it to have fictional texture.

Good storytelling appeals to me - good writing.