Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The truth, finally, is who can tell it.
Do not discount the psychic warmth of the hive.
I think book clubs should read more contemporary poetry.
For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.
Most people dont think about race as much as I do. They dont have to.
Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?
For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.
Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.
I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.
To be honest, Im not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.
To be honest, I'm not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.
It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.
One of the ready advantages of writing a road or quest story is that it mirrors the experience of writing a novel.
It's hard to write a war story without thinking about the 'Iliad.' Because the 'Iliad' knows everything about war.
I suppose people might consider me a 'loose' reader, as I seem willing to read anything of quality thinking and prose.
My family immigrated when I was 3, and our predecessors inhabited the Korean Peninsula for as long as can be recalled.
I wanted to write about the Korean War, but I had no entry into it that made the kind of sense it needs to make for a novelist.
I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.
For me, that's always been one of the great charms of the first person: we gain access to a very personal, private kind of music.
Before I start my work in the morning, I need to have quickly browsed the entire paper, noting articles that I want to read during lunch.
No place is perfect, but I admire Oahu for its offering of the tropical and the urban, and then its Asian-inflected culture and cuisines.
As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.
It's not that I don't enjoy other people, but what I find with writers is this back and forth. And also, there's no need to talk about work.
We arrived the way most emigrant families did. My father came first, and the rest of us - my mother, my sister and me - followed a year later.
I think my parents recognised that I'd always wanted to be a writer, and so they didn't think that this was some idle, faddish wish on my part.
In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.
All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.
Like most people, Im fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect.
Like most people, I'm fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect.
I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.
I didn't leave Wall Street because the work was against my nature - I do have a pretty good head for numbers. I left because I had this love for writing.
I really try to forget. I only look at my old works if there's an interview and someone asks me about it. Otherwise, it's not even in the rearview mirror.
I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.
They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.
I think their pasts are treated with a voice that sees their role as those of innocents. That's reflected in the past time sequences. They're less "written."
I don't listen to music while writing; it seems to me I'm trying to make my own kind of music, and to have anything else going on is just noisy interference.
What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But you keep coming back for more?
We can skip through a lot of the stuff people might ask about the writing of the book, and so their comments always start well, well down into the nitty-gritty.
The past, as you suggest, is absolutely present at all times and the present is born from the past. I wouldn't want to suggest that the past determines the present.
When I'm describing wartime activities or violence I don't want to be too ornate, to prettify the picture. Once we trace them to the present, the prose becomes denser.
We know the point of the 2010 Census is to count us, one by one, to tally every last resident, but the massive project of course has more prying, if limited, interests.
So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.
I remember when I was in art classes, I hated following the assignments. And I would get in trouble for doing something totally different or taking it in a weird direction.
My writing day follows my family's day. I get a good few hours in the mornings when the kids are out of the house. And I don't work at night any more. I like to see my family.
My parents - my mother, particularly - were very focused on our succeeding. I loved my parents, and was very grateful to them for everything, and I didn't want to disappoint them.
A tale, like the universe, they tell us, expands ceaselessly each time you examine it, until there’s finally no telling exactly where it begins, or ends, or where it places you now.
There is secrecy and betrayal but that's more part and parcel of the kind of anguish that the people go through. And maybe that's modes of survival, rather than modes of consciousness.
Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap.
I don't like to use writing assignments, exercises. I think too often people get comfortable writing in that vein, but you can't go on to write a novel comprised of short writing exercises.
I don't feel uncomfortable in America, but every once in a while, I'm reminded that people don't see me the way I see me. It doesn't change my life, but it gives me a consciousness about it.