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

Hanya Yanagihara

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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. "

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" 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. "

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" Florence is perhaps best known for being the seat of Renaissance art, and rightly so: A greatest-hits collection of artists passed through its streets - Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, and Brunelleschi among them. "

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

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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. "

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" 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. "

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" I really don't have anything urgent to say, and I think you shouldn't write unless you have something urgent to say. Sometimes that troubles me, and sometimes I don't really care. "

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" 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. "

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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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" 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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" 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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" Go to any Shinto temple in Japan and you'll see it: a simple stand from which hang hundreds of wooden postcard-size plaques with a colorful image on one side and, on the other, densely scribbled Japanese characters in black felt-tip pen, pleas to the gods for help or succor. "

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" I've always thought that one of the least successful encounters is meeting a writer one admires. For one thing, writers are generally much kinder, more empathetic, more generous people on the page than they are in person. "

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" We think of writing a book as a process, but the very word - process - suggests that there is one: a template to follow, a map to guide us. If that were true, someone would have surely figured out some marketable method we could all buy. "

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" I don't think that genius goes hand in hand with being socially inept or being a sociopath or being a misanthrope, but I do think that it is a mind that can think so differently - so beyond how one is supposed to think. "

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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. "

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" Eating local is a relatively new concept in American dining; for the Italians, it's a way of life. "

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" The speed limit on most of Maui's highways is forty miles per hour, but my mother never went above thirty. "

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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

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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. "

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