Gene Luen Yang Quotes
I got these big coffee table books about Chinese opera from the local library, and I loved looking through them. I loved studying the intricate costumes and figuring out how to 'cartoonify' them.
Quotes to Explore
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In China, because Chinese is a tonal language, it can be kind of hard to follow people's emotional tracks. There was one moment where a woman I was interviewing just sort of burst into tears, and I can usually sort of tell when things are coming on, and in that moment, it was very unexpected.
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Kids are meeting in coffee shops and basements figuring out what's unsustainable in their communities. That's the future.
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But it's the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That's why I don't just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven't been.
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Written by the ancient Chinese philosopher of the same name, the 'Zhuangzi' is one long perplexing puzzle of a rambling collection of enigmatic short stories. It's a strange feeling to laugh at a joke written by someone in the 4th century B.C.
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I still think the best classic meal in New York is a coffee-shop breakfast - you sort of can't skip it.
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I try to do things that make me feel good. I go to yoga classes, drink a lot of water, eat healthily and keep things like alcohol and coffee to weekends. I don't overdo anything.
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I'm so damn boring. I like reading and writing and making coffee. And walking. Barry Jenkins likes long walks.
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When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing.
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I didn't belong to the sort of family where the children's classics were laid on. I went to the public library and read everything I could get my hands on.
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The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.
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You can be covered and be very sexy. It's not what you show; it's what you have in mind, the way you cross your legs, the way you talk to people.
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In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.
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Academically, I was never that interested. I skipped classes. My biggest dream was to have a coffee shop, but I had no idea how to get the money to do that.
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A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded pistol on your coffee table - There's nothing wrong with them, but it's hard to stop thinking about it.
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I'm a coffee enthusiast. I try not to have too many bad habits.
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It's a matter of invitations versus context. Twitter is really good at providing context, like, I'm having coffee at Third Rail Coffee.' Foursquare is about invitations to places. In this respect Foursquare has started to replace Yelp for me.
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I've never drunk coffee. I'm convinced it has something to do with why my skin is good. I have either mint, green or black tea.
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I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court.
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Putting our ecosystem in great peril is certainly not a part of Chinese culture that I know.
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The most difficult battles in life are those we fight within. - Old Chinese Proverb
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Yes, I get a report from BMI about the frequency of performances, and it is very surprising. They played one of my most advanced pieces, and one of my most unusual ones on the radio.
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Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.
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I got these big coffee table books about Chinese opera from the local library, and I loved looking through them. I loved studying the intricate costumes and figuring out how to 'cartoonify' them.
