Rachel Kushner Quotes

I never set out to write literature; I set out to tell stories. And some of my work may be very raunchy and very bloodthirsty - but life, for me, is a violent thing.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based.

The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.

I want my fiction to seem real.

The best writers attempt to become alternative historians.

The thing I am attracted to is just good writing and stories that are based somewhat in reality.

I like writing historical fiction.

Quite casually I wander into my plot, poke around with my characters for a while, then amble off, leaving no moral proved and no reader improved.

I'm trying to tell a story and do it truthfully.

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

It's funny with fiction - once you cut something, it hasn't happened anymore.

I'm always saying that my books are not autobiographical because they're not. I can't choose any one scene and say, 'Oh, this is exactly what happened to me!' I just use little snippets of things as a starting point!

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.

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

I like inventing things when I write rather than autobiography.

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

I have been writing songs and poems since I was a little girl. I started writing short scripts, which evolved into the idea for a book.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

This is a cliche, but in fiction, I feel it is easier for me to get to some sort of truth, some kind of more honest writing.

No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.