Chang Rae Lee Quotes

I'll read pretty much anywhere and anytime, but for a while now, I've really enjoyed reading on flights, especially the longer hauls, when I'm unplugged from everything and can completely immerse myself in the world of a book and submit happily to its rhythms, perspectives, ideas.
I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how best to live there. That feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate - with all the attendant problems and complications and delight.
I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.
In my other books, things do happen, but they are kind of bookends to the real action, which for me was an exploration of consciousness. Not that I don't get into the consciousness of the people in 'The Surrendered,' but you could say there's not as much anxiety about it.
In my teaching, I try to expose my students to the widest range of aesthetic possibilities, so I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes, and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching literature.
It's hard to write a war story without thinking about the 'Iliad.' Because the 'Iliad' knows everything about war.
Like most people, I'm fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect.
Most people don't think about race as much as I do. They don't have to.
My family immigrated when I was 3, and our predecessors inhabited the Korean Peninsula for as long as can be recalled.
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.
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.
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.
One of the ready advantages of writing a road or quest story is that it mirrors the experience of writing a novel.
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.
To be honest, I'm not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.
Unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe, I don't like proper dress while working. I like writing in pajama-like clothing, which eases and relaxes me and allows me to connect with the decidedly improper.
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.
We grow up with this idea that we're all individual agents. We work, make our money, have our place to live and our satellite TV. But whether you like it or not, you need family or community.
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.
We read and remember certain writers because they offer distinctive voices and perspectives, because they've given themselves over completely and passionately to their obsessions while vigorously ignoring everything else.
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AuthorName
Chang-Rae Lee
Profession
Novelist
BirthDate
29 July, 1965
Country
South Korea
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