Joseph Nicholas

“Charisma does not originate inside the person called “charismatic.” It comes from the need of others to believe that special people exist. Without having met him, I was certain that Pascal Balmy’s charisma, like anyone’s—Joan of Arc’s, let’s say—resided only in the will of other people to believe. Charismatic people understand this will-to-believe best of all. They exploit it. That is their so-called charisma.”
― Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

“People tell themselves, strenuously, that they believe in this or that political position, whether it is to do with wealth distribution or climate policy or the rights of animals. They commit to some plan, whether it is to stop old-growth logging, or protest nuclear power, or block a shipping port in order to bring capitalism, or at least logistics, to its knees. But the deeper motivation for their rhetoric—the values they promote, the lifestyle they have chosen, the look they present—is to shore up their own identity.”
― Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

“Agamemnon, butcher of Troy, who led the greatest men of Greece to their deaths in a ten-year war over an absent queen. The poets certainly love him, and when bones are dust and the dust has blown into the sea before the crumbled ashes of Troy, on that day indeed the poets’ love will be the only love that matters. Penelope does not have the words to answer this.”
― Claire North, Ithaca

“What had Bruno said about the future? When we face our need to control it, we are better able to resist that need, and to live in the present.”
― Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake