Kevin Kwan Quotes
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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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My mother likes to say that I was conceived to shop - not just born to shop. My whole life as a child was following her and her sister and friends around on her shopping trips.
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As a child, I could bike down the hill from my house and grab an ice-cold bottle of soda from the neighborhood grocer, which was nothing more than a corrugated metal shack run by two Indian men clad in sarongs.
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When cultural movements happen, it's so beyond your control.
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People are often disappointed when they meet me because I'm not this giant, flamboyant - you know, I don't wear sequined jackets.
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People have always been fascinated by the foibles of the wealthy and privileged.
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At least when it comes to food, there's no snobbery in Singapore.
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As a child, I didn't even realize I was Chinese. I was Singaporean, but my identity was wrapped up in the culture I was experiencing every day.
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I go to Shenzhen, China, and am taken to a vast luxury spa with a hundred leather recliners and a hundred accompanying plasma screen televisions bolted to the ceiling.
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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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The idea of Asian ascendancy has entered public culture.
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In Asia, it's customary to get together with your entire extended family on a regular basis, and it's all rife with politics.
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My grandparents were far more English in their manners than they were Chinese. For example, we spoke English at home, had afternoon tea every day, and my grandfather, who attended university in Scotland, would smoke his pipe after dinner.
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My father grew up in a life of extreme privilege.
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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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If I were to generalize a bit, I would say that the ultra rich in Asia live on a scale that far surpasses the wealthy in the U.S. or Europe.
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In order for me to write a scene, it's very important for me to see and experience everything with my own eyes, so yes, I was able to visit some remarkable houses and destinations while I was in China.
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Especially in the West, people want to understand Asia on a deeper level because it's become the engine of the world economy, like it or not.
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My father came from old money. There was less of an expectation for the children to earn a living.
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I have a photographic memory.
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My father went to boarding school in Sydney when he was 14.
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Every family is a crazy family.
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I think snobbery is one of the oldest customs in the world, and the rich will always find ways to rank each other and make themselves feel more special than others.