Rachel Kushner Quotes

What appears on the page comes out of your experience, and no-one is going to see it in quite the same way - so, that being so, you're already doing something in a thoroughly individual and idiosyncratic way anyway.

Don't imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

Remember that what you have is unique because it's your own special way of looking at the world.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own.

Don't try to write to the trend of the moment.

It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

There's nothing particularly unique about my experiences except that they're my experiences.

I just do what I think is funny and what's exciting to me.

I'm not trying to stay in the same place and I'm not trying to compete with what's currently in fashion. That would be dishonest. But, at the same time, I'm different and the music reflects that to some degree.

I have my own voice and can focus only on that. I know what I like; I find my inspirations in so many other places than just online and bring that into my work.

And I think I have a distinct voice.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

Forget about trying to compete with someone else. Create your own pathway. Create your own new vision.

In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized.

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

Making art is different for everyone.

In stand-up it really helps to play yourself and talk about your own feelings. You cannot fail to be original if you're just talking about what you think about X, Y and Z. Unless you've got a twin brother who's also a stand-up.

Don't try to write what other people are writing - write what is true to you.

I always do things that are not the flavour of the season. And that's why people like me.

The educator should do anything but advise the child to do what everybody does. He should rather rejoice when he sees in the child tendencies to deviation.

Work out of your work. Don't work out of anybody else's work.