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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I make a mean cup of coffee, if you give me the right ingredients.
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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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The Chinese have made a faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort. They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden.
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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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My store, Wine Library, outsells big national chains. How do you think we do it? It started with hustle. I always say that our success wasn't due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.
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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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I want, through my roles, to express the parts in the hearts of Chinese women that they feel unable to let out.
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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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I don't mind doing action or kung fu, but I'm also really happy to do something dramatic. I'd like to show that a Chinese girl doesn't have to do crazy martial arts to get the part.
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Woodrow Wilson called for leaders who, by boldly interpreting the nation's conscience, could lift a people out of their everyday selves. That people can be lifted into their better selves is the secret of transforming leadership.
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Marriage equality is the law of the land. Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law - end of story.
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I'm going to make the claim that I'm stronger than Obama when it comes to civil liberties, and I'm going to make the claim that I'm stronger than Romney when it comes to dollars and cents.
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His own infinity becomes zero in relation to that of the least fragment of the solid. He hardly exists at all. Trillions multiplies by trillions of trillions of such as he could not cross the frontier even of breadth, the idea which he came to guess at only because he felt himself bound by some mysterious power.
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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.
