Rachel Kushner Quotes

Tone has the living soul.

In writing, I search for believability, simplicity and emotional impact.

But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with - more - makes what's being told. A story is its style.

It's not about what you tell the reader, it's about what you conceal.

I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.

I think so much of writing is an instinct, or a feel for a scene, or a feel for a character. You have to put into words the word 'tone,' which I think is thrown around a lot and can mean a hundred different things, but communicating that to other people is definitely a challenge.

But I'm a fairly mechanical worker - I tend not to think about themes so much as plot. I want to get the feeling right. If it's moving through tunnels, I ask myself, what is it like to move through tunnels?

I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.

I think it has most to do with the way in which a story is told, whether it feels real either via the music of the telling or the 'honesty' of the story.

I have an obligation as a writer to tell a story as interestingly as possible, but with integrity and not inserting false drama... I'm looking to be subtle, but being a wordsmith does not interest me - I want to communicate.

You can hear my opinion on various subjects, but telling my story is the most authentic thing I can do. There's nothing more powerful I can share with an audience.

I think it helped that 'Fleabag' had such a dramatic arc to it, even though it was disguised as a comedy.

Style is like voice, it grows organically from the truth of one's own life experience. Not in terms of chapters, per se, but in terms of stories. It is the story itself that creates an inherent structure.

I think tone gives birth to the story.

You have to find your tone and work within that to make it as real so the audience can really engage in the story you're telling.

I've always worked a lot with silence in my films. It forces the audience to concentrate on what they're seeing, because silence is pure emotions. It has no logic; it goes straight to the heart.

I'm still writing from personal experiences, which is what people connected with in the first place.

With something that's not based just in comedy, you can be a bit weirder in a slightly realistic way.

I feel, in drama, you don't need to be fed everything. Even though sometimes when you watch, you want to know what happened and you want to see it, I feel like sometimes it's so much stronger to see the effects that those actions have had.

When you're putting together a concept album, it's all about the flow and the story.

If the stories come, you get them written, you're on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

It is the individual voice, present to itself, that needs to be heard. We need to hear the process of the musician working on himself. We don't need to hear who is more clever with synthesizers. Our cleverness has created the world we live in, which in many ways, we're sorry about.

Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I mean, I wanted people to love the book. And the only way to get them to love it is to try to make it good for them. So of course the audience has to be considered.

Tone is always such an important thing, and that's achieved through a multitude of people. It comes through the writing, it comes through the way it's shot, and it comes through the production design and the sound design.