Kevin Kwan Quotes
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There's always been this tradition of satirizing these rich groups of people.
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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 grew up in a household where there were really, really strong matriarchal characters. I think that's true of many Asian households. People tend to think of Asia as a misogynistic society or a society where men rule. At least in my experience, the women rule the household; the women rule the social scene. The men often become very useless.
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My father went to boarding school in Sydney when he was 14.
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My grandmother used to get her shoes made in Paris in the '30s, and they would be shipped to her in Singapore.
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The most important thing to keep in mind is the incredible diversity of talent that's out there - there are so many great actors from all over Asia, from Singapore and Hong Kong to the Philippines and Mainland China, not to mention many great Asian-American actors who are eager for fun and challenging roles.
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The characters that populate my books are global nomads in their own right, keeping multiple homes around the world and constantly jet-setting to new places.
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I remember I had an aunt that lived in a house that had this beautiful ceramic wall that was entirely a painting of a peacock.
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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.
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I wanted to explore what all this new-found wealth means for the different generations of Chinese who have to live together in this place that is transforming at warp speed into the richest country on the planet.
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At least when it comes to food, there's no snobbery in Singapore.
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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 really don't keep an outline; I don't organize in any way. I just write.
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People have always been fascinated by the foibles of the wealthy and privileged.
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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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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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There's so much emphasis on the economic might of China, of Southeast Asia, Asian 'Super Tigers' and things like that. But nobody was really looking from the perspective of a family story, of these individuals.
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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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I sort of wanted to reveal this other side of Asia: Southeast Asia, where the Chinese have been wealthy for generations and have different ways of relating to money. I wanted to sort of reveal this world to readers.
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When cultural movements happen, it's so beyond your control.
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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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The idea of Asian ascendancy has entered public culture.
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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 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.