Quote

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.

Chang-Rae Lee

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Chang-Rae Lee
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: July 29
Academic
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
Seoul Teukbyeolsi
Firsts
Accept
Book
Accepting
First
Written
Time
Moment
Experience
Moments
Accrued
Littles
Snapshot
Little
Snapshots

More quotes by Chang-Rae Lee

Image
Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
One of the things my friends would tell you is that I hang out with a lot of non-writers - just regular people like bankers and teachers, and I actually try to steer our talk away from my work when I get together with them.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
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.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
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.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
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?
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
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.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
I think the action is ninety-three percent, and the consideration is peppered throughout but pretty short... Once I start it, I feel as though I don't want to look over my shoulder too much. I want to trust the preparations I've made.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
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.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
Maybe someone's who's a different kind of writer [would think otherwise] - someone who'd be just as comfortable writing essays on what their novels are about. Sometimes you feel like certain novelists are like that.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
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.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
Most people dont think about race as much as I do. They dont have to.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
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.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
Do not discount the psychic warmth of the hive.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
You can be affected by a person because of something particular they said or did but sometimes how a person was, a manner of being, that gets most deeply absorbed, and prompts you to revisit certain parts of your life with an enhanced perspective, flowing forward right up to now.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
I'd always wanted to write something about the Korean War because of my heritage. My father lost his brother during the war, and I fictionalized that episode, which was told to me very briefly without much detail.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
It's not that I wrote those details, but photos can give you the confidence that you have a real feel for the landscape. Then you can invent with a solid kind of faith, and recreate a feel and flavor of the time, and, one hopes, a tonality, a sense of that time having been lived by those characters.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there was no talk about the business, and there was probably a lot more angsty talk back then. But these days maybe there are some more laments about the culture, but I would say no.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
To be honest, Im not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.
Chang-Rae Lee
Image
I had a visceral connection to the period [of Korean War]. By visceral I suppose I mean emotional. But every fiction requires so much that is not that so I did a lot of other research and a lot of thinking, a lot of struggling there.
Chang-Rae Lee