Iris Chang Quotes
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After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.
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Not only do people go into Chinese restaurants, but people are more likely to work with other Chinese-Americans, more likely to marry them.
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Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.
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It's much more difficult to work on a broad subject than on a specific one, because even if it's hard to find the information, if you look hard enough for something specific you will find it, and you will discover things that you wouldn't have thought of before.
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It's a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.
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I don't mind solitude. I love talking to other people, but I do need my space.
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I received an honorary doctorate for my work. Maybe one of these works is considered the equivalent of a Ph.D.
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When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out.
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I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.
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It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.
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I have to finish this book tour of almost 30 cities.
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Congressman David Woo, when he wanted to give a speech at the Department of Energy-ironically to celebrate Asian History month-they stopped him. They wouldn't let him in. This was shortly after the Wen Ho Lee scandal.
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I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills.
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The Committee of 100 commissioned a survey in which they found that Asian-American candidates are the most unpopular of all the races. They found that people were less likely to vote for Chinese-Americans than other minorities.
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Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.
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There is a perception that the Chinese started out downtrodden and abused in the 19th century and gradually rose to the top of society as model minorities, and you see them winning Nobel Prizes and getting into our best colleges. But it is not a linear progression. Things don't always get better.
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When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.
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Some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided that they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat.
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Please believe in THE POWER OF ONE. One person can make an enormous difference in the world. One person - actually, one idea - can start a war, or end one, or subvert an entire power structure. One discovery can cure a disease or spawn new technology to benefit or annihilate the human race. You as ONE individual can change millions of lives. Think big. Do not limit your vision and do not ever compromise your dreams or ideals.
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Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.
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As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.
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Even if you wanted to be a hermit, people come out looking for you. I don't want to cloister myself away, but it is important for me to write about issues that have universal significance. One of them that have resonated with me all my life has been the theme of injustice.
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I started off majoring in math and computer science and then majored in journalism because I knew I wanted to become a writer one day.
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This by no means the last word on the Chinese in America. This is my personal interpretation of the 150-year epic history of Chinese in this country.