Chang-Rae Lee Quotes
No place is perfect, but I admire Oahu for its offering of the tropical and the urban, and then its Asian-inflected culture and cuisines.
Quotes to Explore
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I'm working now on a collection of Shakespearean sonnets, about 100 of them, that I may publish if anyone's interested. My take on life is a little different from the bard's.
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In the future, I'd like to see paleontology as a whole get a lot more quantitative.
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Like most ghetto kids I knew it was important to be 'somebody' so I became a good soccer player, because excelling at a sport seemed to make you special.
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I had one week in the fall of 1996 where I was like, 'I'm America's greatest living teenage poet.'
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My whole life has been a huge mistake, but what a divine mistake - doing something that I adore.
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I think Hollywood wants to be safe. The things you do first become your calling card, and I think people just sort of go, 'Well, we know he can do that.' They kind of put you in that hole.
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No, but there are people I grew up with from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that would give any person on 'Justified' a run for their money in the scary department.
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For me the purest and truest art in the world is science fiction.
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When I was young, we were taught not to dunk. We were taught not to stand out from the rest of the team. It's different now.
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I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.
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I started to wear the sunglasses all the time at school, hiding behind them... I'd walk down the hallways, practically hugging the wall, dragging my head against it like I was crazy.
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Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.
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In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
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I can honestly say that I've done everything I've wanted to do, always. Not without difficulty. But every time I wanted to do something, I just did it, from the age of 18 when I started my own theater with my friends. When I decided I wanted to act. I just bit the bullet.
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Writing is sacred, other activities are profane, and I don't want them to corrupt my writing.
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I don't feel particularly comfortable about actors using whatever power they may have to push their beliefs, unless they're extremely well informed.
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The poem is important, but not more than the people whose survival it serves...
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Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.
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In our culture, I feel like everyone just wants the good life, the dream life, but I'm learning to embrace suffering because with suffering there's so much good that comes out of it.
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I took Japanese in high school. I'm Chinese, though, and I just fell in love with the language and the culture.
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The euphoria around economic booms often obscures the possibility for a bust, which explains why leaders typically miss the warning signs.
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I just want to get my voice heard again and to allow people to know me outside of a group situation. I also want young girls who look up to me to know not to give up, even when people try and take you away from your destiny.
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All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than in enjoyment; but all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than in expectation.
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No place is perfect, but I admire Oahu for its offering of the tropical and the urban, and then its Asian-inflected culture and cuisines.
