Hanya Yanagihara Quotes
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We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.
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The only difference between a good writer who publishes a book and a good writer who doesn't is that the writer who publishes actually finished her book.
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Part of adulthood is searching for the people who understand you.
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Any frequent visitor to Hawaii is fixated on mapping how the islands have changed since their last visit.
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From 1999 through 2001, I was an editor at a now-defunct magazine about the media industry called 'Brill's Content' that eventually merged with a now-defunct website about the media industry called Inside.com.
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I think fiction writers should work. If you have a job and are not living off advances or grants, you never have to make concessions in your writing, ever.
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The first thing I do whenever I go to Thailand is seek out the closest restaurant or stall selling mango-and-sticky rice: it's a little hillock of glutinous rice drenched in lashings of coconut milk and served with fresh mango.
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Those of us lucky enough to fall in love with Asia know that it's an affair that's as long as it is resonant.
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There's something nice and intimate about having a book. You know that someone's actually gone on this journey. You know that someone has actually researched and reported all these things. You can see and hear their tone in what they chosen to include and what they haven't.
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Publishing is a business, and I completely understand it. But when you don't have to depend on writing for your identity or your income, you can do whatever you want.
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I really don't have anything urgent to say, and I think you shouldn't write unless you have something urgent to say. Sometimes that troubles me, and sometimes I don't really care.
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I go to Japan every November on vacation, and the one thing I never return home without is yuba, which is the thin skin that forms atop boiling soy milk. You skim it off and either eat it fresh or dry it.
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Life will end in death and unhappiness, but we do it anyway.
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In Mumbai, the air is saltier. The sea is roilier. The traffic is snarlier. The pinks are pinker. The ostentation is crazier.
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I always wanted to be a scientist. I don't really have any writer friends.
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The first thing many tourists see in Hawaii is concrete - a long dreary stretch of it through landscapes dominated by sad, cheap apartment buildings and almost entirely denuded of plant life.
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One of the fun things about unreliable narrators is they can be funny. You can admire things about them and laugh with them.
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I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.
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The term 'pashmina' is often used interchangeably with 'cashmere,' but in reality, pashmina is a specific type of very fine, lofty cashmere, woven from a specific type of goat - one indigenous to northern India, Nepal, and Pakistan, and harvested and woven there as well.
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In a basic sense, 'A Little Life' is a homage to how my friends and I live our lives. I wanted to push past the definitions of how we typically define friendship. It's a different version of adulthood, but it's no less important and no less legitimate than anyone else's.
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We imbue deserts and the tundra with menace because nothing, or little, grows there.
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Hong Kong has plenty of superlative hotels, amazing food, and cool shopping.
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I'd be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I.
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Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull.