The Flamethrowers
Rachel Kushner
Top 10 Best Quotes
“People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You're driven to love them. People who want their love easy don't really want love.”
“I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.”
“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.”
“It was not the case that one thing morphed into another, child into woman. You remained the person you were before things happened to you. The person you were when you thought a small cut string could determine the course of a year. You also became the person to whom certain things happened. Who passed into the realm where you no longer questioned the notion of being trapped in one form. You took on that form, that identity, hoped for its recognition from others, hoped someone would love it and you.”
“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.”
“Making art was really about the problem of the soul, of losing it. It was a technique for inhabiting the world. For not dissolving into it.”
“A blend of good and bad characterized all humans, and to pretend to sort that out was an insult to human complexity. But at the same time, Sandro understood that people only tended to allow their own contradictions, and not those of others. It was OK to be murky to yourself, to know you weren't an angel, but other people had to be more cleanly divided into good and bad.”
“The desire for love is universal but that has never meant it’s worthy of respect. It’s not admirable to want love, it just is.”
“The answer is not coming. I have to find an arbitrary point inside the spell of waiting, the open absence, and tear myself away. Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.”
“(Later, Giddle's response when I told her I was in love: "Oh God, I'm so sorry. Love is awful. It ruins every normal thing, everything but itself. It makes you crazy and for nothing, because it's so disappointing. But good luck with that.")”
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Book Keywords:
love, the-flamethrowers, men, infatuation, destiny, talking, rachel-kushner
