A forced contemplation of the heavens, crisp and angelic blue, a classic prelude to death.

— Rachel Kushner

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them.

— Rachel Kushner

All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Ponzi said. And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulders like a stinking vulture, he said, we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom.

— Rachel Kushner

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.

— Rachel Kushner

Danton is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It's very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contra dance.

— Rachel Kushner

Gloria was still talking, something about how shooting people was in a sense safer than making art, in terms of avoiding serious lapses in taste.

— Rachel Kushner

I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.

— Rachel Kushner

I don't believe that intelligence can be reduced to a number, frankly. But I can see how doing exactly that produces a useful sorting mechanism in our society in order to separate children into categories of promising and doomed. The tests seem arbitrary and without real scientific value and yet have lasting consequences.

— Rachel Kushner

If your parents died suddenly, Sandro understood, your home was wherever you were, and now you were from nowhere. Your parents were your provenance. Dead, you had no provenance.

— Rachel Kushner

I have enormous respect for people who are gifted mechanics.

— Rachel Kushner