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" I think I passed up a lot of opportunities for love because I was too interested in identity politics. "

Hanya Yanagihara

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" 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. "

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" Misanthropy is born, I think, out of an almost oppressive sense of loneliness, a conviction that there's no one on earth who understands you. I don't think misanthropes hate people: They hate that people hate them. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" The first thing many tourists see in Hawaii is concrete - a long dreary stretch of it through landscapes dominated by sad, cheap apartment buildings and almost entirely denuded of plant life. "

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" Part of adulthood is searching for the people who understand you. "

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" When you have very lax parents, you tend to get more conservative kids. "

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" Where most of the country is, well, hot - from the bone-baking dry heat of the desert to the flesh-melting humidity of Kerala in the south - Kashmir is cool: so cool, in fact, that in the winter, the temperatures can sink to sub-zero. "

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" What any writer hopes for is that the reader will stick with you to the end of the contract and that there is a level of submission on the reader's part. "

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" 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

" I'd be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" There comes a point when you're writing a novel when you're in it so deep that the life of the novel becomes more real to you than life itself. You have to write your way out of it; once you're there, it's too late to abandon. "

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" I go to Japan every November on vacation, and the one thing I never return home without is yuba, which is the thin skin that forms atop boiling soy milk. You skim it off and either eat it fresh or dry it. "

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" 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

" 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. "

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" Once you join the queue for the immigration line, pay attention to what the expeditor tells you. Have your papers ready. Don't have your cell phone out. Take off your hat. Open your passport to the page with your photo and present it to the immigration officer already open. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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

" It's a funny thing about cities: Some have brief, bright moments of cultural and political dominance, decades- or centuries-long spells when they seem the center of their particular nation, or region, or empire... only to later fall into obscurity and disrepair, never to regain their former glory. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" I wanted to write a story about colonization and about Hawaii. I went to college right at the height of identity politics, and that's how I always read 'The Tempest,' for example. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" I wanted to see how flavors, spices, and grains traveled back and forth along the Silk Road and were interpreted by a multitude of cultures' palates. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" We tend to talk about death as if it is losing a battle, but that assumes living is winning and dying is not. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" I think fiction writers should work. If you have a job and are not living off advances or grants, you never have to make concessions in your writing, ever. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" No religion makes more use of color than Hinduism, with its blue-skinned gods and peony-lipped goddesses, and even the spring festival of Holi is focused on color: Boys squirt arcs of dyed water on passersby or dump powder, all violently hued, on their marks. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" I think at first I didn't tell anyone I was writing something because I found so tedious the people who did. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" The term 'pashmina' is often used interchangeably with 'cashmere,' but in reality, pashmina is a specific type of very fine, lofty cashmere, woven from a specific type of goat - one indigenous to northern India, Nepal, and Pakistan, and harvested and woven there as well. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" Life will end in death and unhappiness, but we do it anyway. "

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" I took a 51 day trip through Asia; 12 countries and 26 cities. I traveled for 51 days. So, it was everywhere from Sri Lanka and that all the way to Japan, where we ended it. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" One of the things I'm fascinated by as a traveler is watching how different countries control how they let the world encounter them. "

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