Rachel Kushner Quotes

“There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not really understood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn’t really hit you, and then when it does, that’s when you feel like shit.”

“I’m not really putting this very well. My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you’re supposed to think are deep because they’re in italics. Do you know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about sentences like this: The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before. Barf. Forget it. For me personally, things are in no way more meaningful because I got to know Rachel before she died. If anything, things are less meaningful. All right?”

“The most beautiful thing about you is that you’re not a sock puppet.”

“Crying, semi-hysterically, Mom made a number of points: •Your friend is dying •It’s just so hard to watch a child die •And it’s much harder to watch a friend’s daughter die •But the hardest is watching your son watching his friend die •You have to make your own decisions now •It’s so hard for me to let you make your own decisions •But I have to let you make your own decisions •I am so proud of you •Your friend is dying, and you have been so strong.”