Kevin Kwan Quotes
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Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.
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'China rich' is the new 'crazy rich.' It's a new level of outrageousness. It comes from this world where overnight fortunes have been made, but the fortunes are so ginormous compared to anything we've ever seen in the history of the world.
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To me, families are fascinating. I choose to explore it through comedy and through comic situations.
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I grew up at a time in Singapore - the '70s and '80s - where it was still possible to go riding around the island barefoot. And I was one of these kids that was just climbing trees and running around the neighbourhood.
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It used to be, on TV, you'd see only two types of Asians. You'd see the science geek who's using his mobile phone or something like that, or you'd see a very token Asian family - yuppie mother and father and two little Asian kids. It's the last barrier for Hollywood.
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I'm not revealing any deep, hidden secret that there are wealthy people in Asia.
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'Crazy Rich Asians' may be fiction, but given the situation I grew up in, I've had an unparalleled view into the very real world it depicts.
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In Singapore, there may be 50 old-money families, but you wouldn't know them to look at them.
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I met a Shanghai photographer who finds these old streets and matches the French names to what they are today. I was able to find my grandfather's block, and just walking the same streets and finding his house was deeply moving. I finally felt connected to China.
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I spent the first 12 years of my life growing up in Singapore. Back then, in the early '80s, it was still a tropical island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula striving to shine on the world stage.
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I've recently rediscovered Anthony Trollope. I used to read him back in college, and a friend turned me on to a whole new series of his work, 'The Palliser Series.' It's a series of seven or eight books.
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I wanted to introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience.
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Couture occupies the uppermost stratosphere of fashion. It is the holy of holies, as only about 2,000 women globally are fortunate enough to wear these precious garments tailored to their exact measurements, making it perhaps the most exclusive club in the world.
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I do believe that peoples' natures can be changed, and they have to be changed if we want to live in this modern world and be a part of it.
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Every family is a crazy family.
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Canada has become such a staging area for Chinese money.
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Old money in Southeast Asia is much more discrete and low key. It's about not wearing brand names. It's about being invisible, almost. The billionaire can be taking the bus with you.
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When my first novel, 'Crazy Rich Asians,' was published in 2013, many readers were astonished to learn that in Asia, there were women who dressed in couture from morning till night.
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I love romantic comedies more than anything.
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Growing up in Singapore, I wasn't allowed to visit China. So when I was finally able to go there after the country began opening up to tourism in the 1990s, I found it to be utterly astounding.
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They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.
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I have a photographic memory.
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I remembered that my grandfather had spent his teenage years in Shanghai and that he went back after he finished medical school to work there in a hospital. So I went back into my family archives and was able to find out his exact address; it was a street that was in the French Concession.
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I'm not sure if being Chinese really helped, but I do think that if a non-Asian had written a book called 'Crazy Rich Asians,' they might not have been looked upon so kindly.