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The Flamethrowers QUOTES

The Flamethrowers QUOTES

1 " Who knew why they waited, I thought, understanding that I, too, had it in me to wait. To expect change to come from outside, to concentrate on the task of meeting it, waiting to meet it, rather than going out and finding it. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

2 " I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

3 " There's an innocent displacement, a dreaming, and idols are perfect for a little girl's dreaming. They aren't real. They aren't the gas station attendant trying to lure you into the back of the service station, a paperboy trying to lure you into a toolshed, a friend's father trying to lure you into his car. They don't lure. They beckon, but like desert mirages. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

4 " 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 , The Flamethrowers

5 " 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 , The Flamethrowers

6 " 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 , The Flamethrowers

7 " All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Lonzi 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 , The Flamethrowers

8 " I thought of the girl in the photo in Ronnie's studio, the one on layaway. She was probably waiting for him this very moment, somewhere downtown. Checking the clock, applying lipstick, concentrating herself into an arrow pointed at Ronnie. Doing the various things women did when they had to wait for something they wanted. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

9 " What happens slowly carries in each part the possibility of returning to what came before. In an accident everything is simultaneous, sudden, irreversible. It means this: no going back. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

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

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

11 " 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 , The Flamethrowers

12 " We should torture language to tell the truth. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

13 " You have time. Meaning don’t use it, but pass through time in patience, waiting for something to come. Prepare for its arrival. Don’t rush to meet it. Be a conduit. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

14 " I trusted the need for risk, the importance of honoring it. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

15 " ...it is easier to like difficult people when they are leaving, or already gone. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

16 " When I was little, skiing in the Sierras, I felt that I was drawing on the mountain’s face, making big sweeping graceful lines. That was how I had started to draw, I’d told Sandro, as a little girl, five, six years old, on skis. Later, when drawing became a habit, a way of being, of marking time, I always thought of skiing. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

17 " Save your freedom for a rainy day,” someone had written on the bathroom wall at Rudy’s Bar in SoHo, "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

18 " The thing about songwriting,” John Dogg was saying to someone, “is that you can address things obliquely, but no matter. You can’t get away from the content that is the essence of the form. All songs are about unrequited love.” “Except ‘Green Onions,’ ” Ronnie said. “Which isn’t about love at all. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

19 " When I was twelve, Flip came through Reno and gave out autographs at a casino. I didn't have a glossy photo for him to sign, so I had him sign my hand. For weeks I took a shower with a plastic bag over that hand, rubbed-banded at the wrist. It wasn't quite a romantic infatuation. There are levels of readiness. Young girls don't entertain the idea of sex, their body and another's together. That comes later, but there isn't nothing before it. There's an innocent displacement, a dreaming, and idols are perfect for a little girl's dreaming. They aren't real. They aren't the gas station attendant trying to lure you into the back of the service station, a paperboy trying to lure you into a tool-shed, a friend's father trying to lure you into his car. They don't lure. They beckon, but like desert mirages. Flip Farmer was safely unreachable. He was something special. I chose him from among all the men in the world, and he signed the back of my hand and smiled with very white, straight teeth. He gave us each that same smile, the children and adults who lined up at Hannah's. We weren't individuals but a surface he moved over, smiling and remote. The thing was, if he had returned my gaze, I probably would have washed his autograph from my hand. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers

20 " I remember a rainbow spectrum of men’s wing tips parked in rows, triple-A narrow, the leather dyed snake green, lemon yellow, and unstable shades of vermilion and Ditto-ink blue. All of humanity dresses in uniforms of one sort or another, and these shoes were for pimps. "

― Rachel Kushner , The Flamethrowers