Rachel Kushner Quotes

My concepts are never bright ideas; they're never notions I think will sell or be trendy or attract new fans. I don't think that way. All I can do is sing from my life.

One of my life philosophies is that you have a choice to make when you're doing something creative. You can be cheesy... or you can be lame.

You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else.

The rule I stand by as an artist is definitely be yourself, and don't make music just for other people: make it for you first.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

I've heard some people say that I'm selling out, but I'm not. If I hadn't done 'Black Radio', and just kept on doing just piano trio stuff, I wouldn't be honest with myself; I'd be doing it to please other people. That would be selling out.

Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write, and don't try to please readers who like something different.

I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them.

Honesty works against you in the entertainment field. I try to be a journalist and a documentarian, but that doesn't mean that people are going to embrace it at the moment. The point is I'm leaving the mark of my hysteria and the political hysteria, and that's it... I can only do what I do.

It's good to please the network, but you really just have to tell the stories you want to tell, and if you try to please other people, it ends up starting to water stuff down. Those decisions we have to make are hard, but we usually just err on the side of 'What would we want to see?'

I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished, without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.

'Playing House' works because we're being supremely honest to what we think is funny and not what we think other people think is funny.

Don't try and make a movie for someone else. You have to make it for you and trust that you're not that unique. And that'll matter to other people as well.

I just always make honest music. I just always kinda do what I wanna do.

This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.

I can only do music if I can do it the way I can do it.

I feel you lose your audience when you make movies for others and not for yourself or your people.

You should do the sound that you want and not what others want.

I've never said anything that I didn't want to say on a record, ever.

No matter what I put out, no matter what genre - because I feel like I'm going to experiment with everything - I hope people will see that it's true to me, that it's honest, and nobody ever thinks that I'm inauthentic.

I feel like if you let someone else create your vision, then it's not true to your band. No one can ever do as good as you want, or as good as you can yourself.

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.

You're supposed to be who you are. You're supposed to make music that is true to you.

Everyone always comes to one point in their life as an artist where you can either let your heart guide you or your ego.