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" 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

Story

College

Identity

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" 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. "

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" 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

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

" I don't believe in post-racial or post-gay or post-anything, but I do think within a certain group of friends, what matters less is the specificities of race and sexuality, and what matters more is the shared experience, shared language and shared cultural touch points. "

" The original Grand Tour would generally begin in Belgium or the Netherlands before moving through Paris, Geneva, Spain, Italy, and perhaps Greece. "

" If the only thing you knew about Oman was its location, you might never go at all. "

" 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. "

" I do have the sense that, although there may be no one way to write a novel, there are many novelists who are in fact part of some sort of larger literary community, whether in the form of a writing group or an MFA program, to name two of the more common forms. "

" Hong Kong has plenty of superlative hotels, amazing food, and cool shopping. "

" When we think of India, most of us are in fact thinking of Rajasthan, that large splotch of dun-colored desert in the country's northwest which, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, was ruled by a succession of maharajas whose sense of color, opulence, and splendor created the most enduring images of India in the West. "

" You see a virus very differently when it's caught and suspended on a slab of glass than when you're observing how it's ravaged a fellow human being. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" One of the fun things about unreliable narrators is they can be funny. You can admire things about them and laugh with them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" In Mumbai, the air is saltier. The sea is roilier. The traffic is snarlier. The pinks are pinker. The ostentation is crazier. "

" The process of being a writer is much more interior than being a scientist, because science is so reactionary. "

Hanya Yanagihara

Science

Process

" I live in Soho in lower New York; there's tons and tons of tourists right outside my door step, obviously. Most of them are European, and all of them have guidebooks. I never see anyone looking at a phone. "

" I think Bhutanese food - long dissed by every food writer out there - has gotten a bum rap. "

" Anyone who has been to India - specifically Rajasthan, the rich and kingly region in the country's northwest - knows that when it comes to adornment, Indians do not think like other people. "

" 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. "

" The nice thing about publishing later in life is that you already know who you are. You don't have to hang out with the 'Paris Review' crowd to try to make yourself feel like a legitimate writer. "