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" I love how Vietnamese cuisine always tastes like flowers, and how they had the ingenious idea of pairing that floral flavor with seafood: such a combination shouldn't work as well as it does. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Seafood
Love
Flowers
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" If the only thing you knew about Oman was its location, you might never go at all. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Location
Knew
You
" Even before it opened its retail arm, Beigh was renowned among pashmina cognoscenti for the quality and complexity of the work produced in its workshop, a large, airy, sunlit rectangle of a room directly across from its second-floor shop. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Complexity
Room
Retail
" I wrote my second novel, 'A Little Life,' in what I still think of as a fever dream: For 18 months, I was unable to properly concentrate on anything else. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Fever
Think
Anything
" I'd be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Better
Far
Insecure
" There's something nice and intimate about having a book. You know that someone's actually gone on this journey. You know that someone has actually researched and reported all these things. You can see and hear their tone in what they chosen to include and what they haven't. "
Hanya Yanagihara
You
Journey
Nice
" One of the writers I most admire is Hilary Mantel because in the middle of her career, she just changed paths entirely and became just a totally different novelist. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Because
Career
Her
" When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible. "
Hanya Yanagihara
You
Never
Possible
" Sometimes we all work so hard to overcome various things, and we are very cruel as a society and tough on people who we think aren't trying hard enough. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Work
People
Society
" Sometimes, of course, there's no quick way to make it through immigration: Different airports have gluts of incoming flights at different times of day, and short of rearranging your flight schedule to ensure you'll land at a low-traffic hour, there's nothing you can do. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Day
Short
Immigration
" I always wanted to be a scientist. I don't really have any writer friends. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Friends
Always
Really
" Part of adulthood is searching for the people who understand you. "
Hanya Yanagihara
You
People
Searching
" The only difference between a good writer who publishes a book and a good writer who doesn't is that the writer who publishes actually finished her book. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Who
Book
Difference
" In a basic sense, 'A Little Life' is a homage to how my friends and I live our lives. I wanted to push past the definitions of how we typically define friendship. It's a different version of adulthood, but it's no less important and no less legitimate than anyone else's. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Past
Life
Friendship
" Every traveler knows too well the endless quest for the perfect travel bag: the one that's stylish enough to carry through Paris, sturdy enough to tote around Peru, and - most important - doesn't make your shoulder sag even before you've loaded it up with everything you need for a day of sightseeing. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Perfect
Bag
Day
" Unlike Milan, Italy's banking capital, or Rome, its religious center, Florence was the place where the rich went to buy goods that would showcase how wealthy they were. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Rich
Italy
Milan
" Kashmir, the 86,000-square-mile region in India's north, both is and isn't the India of the popular imagination. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Kashmir
India
Imagination
" I think that fiction writers can write about anyone. If you are writing a character, and the only thing they are to you is their otherness, then you haven't written a character. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Character
Writing
Think
" Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Hope
Work
Nature
" From 1999 through 2001, I was an editor at a now-defunct magazine about the media industry called 'Brill's Content' that eventually merged with a now-defunct website about the media industry called Inside.com. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Media
Website
Content
" I think for a lot of people, friendship is a relationship that gets devalued once they move on to what people consider to be more important relationships: once you find a partner or when you have kids. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Think
People
Friendship
" We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Culture
Moment
Respect
" Those of us lucky enough to fall in love with Asia know that it's an affair that's as long as it is resonant. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Fall
Long
Know
" I was born in L.A., then we moved to Hawaii, then we moved to New York, then we moved to Baltimore, then we moved to California, then we moved to Hawaii, then we moved to Texas, then we moved to Hawaii, then we moved to California. This was before I was 17. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Born
New York
California
" I think that all research scientists think of themselves as belonging to a grand tradition, building on work that has been worked on since the very beginning of science itself. Whereas I'm not sure writers think of themselves in the same way. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Work
Beginning
Science
" There is something uniquely American about the motel: It speaks to the transient nature of America itself, one enabled and encouraged by our roads and highways. "
Hanya Yanagihara
American
Roads
Nature
" I was interested about how relationships change as you get older. You are great friends in your 20s. In your 30s, you get married. Your 40s are all about your kids. In your 50s, you get divorced, and your friendships become primary again. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Great
Change
Become
" Of course, no one has enough time to see every shop that Mumbai has: That would take more lifetimes than even the gods could offer. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Time
Enough
More
" The process of being a writer is much more interior than being a scientist, because science is so reactionary. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Science
More
Process
" In novels, and American novels in particular, it's not just about redemption, it's about forward movement and healing oneself. Americans are very big on getting better. "
Hanya Yanagihara
Getting Better
Big
American
" Although both of us were raised on Oahu, in Honolulu, my mother has always had fond memories of Maui; this was, after all, where she and my father, then penniless yet oddly optimistic newlyweds, honeymooned in 1969. "
Hanya Yanagihara
She
Always
Memories