Kevin Kwan Quotes
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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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'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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At least when it comes to food, there's no snobbery in Singapore.
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Hollywood is a whole other level of crazy. I've never met so many assistants who have assistants. It's a stratified society on its own.
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People have always been fascinated by the foibles of the wealthy and privileged.
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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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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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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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Every family is a crazy family.
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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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I love romantic comedies more than anything.
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My father grew up in a life of extreme privilege.
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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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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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My father went to boarding school in Sydney when he was 14.
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I have a photographic memory.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.