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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.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan
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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.
Kevin Kwan -
People have always been fascinated by the foibles of the wealthy and privileged.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan -
People are often disappointed when they meet me because I'm not this giant, flamboyant - you know, I don't wear sequined jackets.
Kevin Kwan -
At least when it comes to food, there's no snobbery in Singapore.
Kevin Kwan
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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.
Kevin Kwan -
I love romantic comedies more than anything.
Kevin Kwan -
When cultural movements happen, it's so beyond your control.
Kevin Kwan -
My father came from old money. There was less of an expectation for the children to earn a living.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan
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I have a photographic memory.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan -
My father grew up in a life of extreme privilege.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan -
My father went to boarding school in Sydney when he was 14.
Kevin Kwan -
I live in New York, but I still get the village gossip. My apartment is a crash pad for so many Singaporean cousins and friends.
Kevin Kwan
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Every family is a crazy family.
Kevin Kwan -
I was born on the island of Singapore, and I grew up there until I was 11 years old, when I was forcibly removed by my dad and planted into suburban Houston. I was in shock for the first year and then began to really love it - but didn't love it quite enough to stay.
Kevin Kwan -
A lot of the people who live the lives of 'Crazy Rich Asians' don't see the humour of their lives simply because this is just who they are. Even though I'm from that part of the world, I'm no longer part of that world.
Kevin Kwan -
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.
Kevin Kwan