Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I'm naturally a shy, quiet person. "
Kevin Kwan
Quiet
Shy
Naturally
Related Quotes:
" There are old-money Asians that would never be caught dead with a Chanel handbag or sporting anything that has a label it. "
Kevin Kwan
Caught
Never
Asians
" My mother likes to say that I was conceived to shop - not just born to shop. My whole life as a child was following her and her sister and friends around on her shopping trips. "
Kevin Kwan
Child
Life
Mother
" When my first novel, 'Crazy Rich Asians,' was published in 2013, many readers were astonished to learn that in Asia, there were women who dressed in couture from morning till night. "
Kevin Kwan
Morning
Asia
Crazy
" I've recently rediscovered Anthony Trollope. I used to read him back in college, and a friend turned me on to a whole new series of his work, 'The Palliser Series.' It's a series of seven or eight books. "
Kevin Kwan
Back
Work
Me
" The characters that populate my books are global nomads in their own right, keeping multiple homes around the world and constantly jet-setting to new places. "
Kevin Kwan
Books
Own
Places
" I came from a family of extremely old money, and so by the time I was born, there was really just a trickle of money left. "
Kevin Kwan
Family
Time
Born
" People have always been fascinated by the foibles of the wealthy and privileged. "
Kevin Kwan
Wealthy
Always
Been
" I know an elderly society matron in Singapore who would rather walk in the scorching sun for blocks on end rather than have her chauffeur drive into the Central Business District at peak hour and pay the $1.50 surcharge. "
Kevin Kwan
Walk
Business
Drive
" I live in New York, but I still get the village gossip. My apartment is a crash pad for so many Singaporean cousins and friends. "
Kevin Kwan
Live
Village
Gossip
" There's so much emphasis on the economic might of China, of Southeast Asia, Asian 'Super Tigers' and things like that. But nobody was really looking from the perspective of a family story, of these individuals. "
Kevin Kwan
Story
Perspective
Looking
" If I were to generalize a bit, I would say that the ultra rich in Asia live on a scale that far surpasses the wealthy in the U.S. or Europe. "
Kevin Kwan
Asia
Live
Rich
" Warner Bros. is just this amazing historic studio that does great movies. "
Kevin Kwan
Great
Movies
Amazing
" As a child, I could bike down the hill from my house and grab an ice-cold bottle of soda from the neighborhood grocer, which was nothing more than a corrugated metal shack run by two Indian men clad in sarongs. "
Kevin Kwan
Down
Men
Bike
" It used to be, on TV, you'd see only two types of Asians. You'd see the science geek who's using his mobile phone or something like that, or you'd see a very token Asian family - yuppie mother and father and two little Asian kids. It's the last barrier for Hollywood. "
Kevin Kwan
Family
Father
Phone
" I sort of wanted to reveal this other side of Asia: Southeast Asia, where the Chinese have been wealthy for generations and have different ways of relating to money. I wanted to sort of reveal this world to readers. "
Kevin Kwan
World
Reveal
Side
" They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel. "
Kevin Kwan
Writing
Truth Is
Than
" In Asia, it's customary to get together with your entire extended family on a regular basis, and it's all rife with politics. "
Kevin Kwan
Get Together
Together
Family
" As a child, I didn't even realize I was Chinese. I was Singaporean, but my identity was wrapped up in the culture I was experiencing every day. "
Kevin Kwan
Day
Identity
Child
" Living in the West, you see how there's only two versions of how Asian men are supposed to be. Either they're very nice, yuppie husbands with children in ads, or they're IT geeks. "
Kevin Kwan
Children
You
Living
" Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large. "
Kevin Kwan
Culture
Reflection
People
" If you're the water boiler king of China, you're selling a billion water boilers. "
Kevin Kwan
Water
China
King
" Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash. "
Kevin Kwan
Always
Never
Say
" I have a photographic memory. "
Kevin Kwan
Photographic
Memory
" I remember I had an aunt that lived in a house that had this beautiful ceramic wall that was entirely a painting of a peacock. "
Kevin Kwan
Painting
House
Beautiful
" I'm a writer. I'm naturally introverted, so being the public face of something, I don't think I do it well. "
Kevin Kwan
Writer
Think
Face
" I've always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward's reign. "
Kevin Kwan
King
Age
Me
" My father came from old money. There was less of an expectation for the children to earn a living. "
Kevin Kwan
Father
Children
Old
" I go to Shenzhen, China, and am taken to a vast luxury spa with a hundred leather recliners and a hundred accompanying plasma screen televisions bolted to the ceiling. "
Kevin Kwan
Ceiling
Go
Leather
" A lot of the people who live the lives of 'Crazy Rich Asians' don't see the humour of their lives simply because this is just who they are. Even though I'm from that part of the world, I'm no longer part of that world. "
Kevin Kwan
Crazy
World
See
" Canada has become such a staging area for Chinese money. "
Kevin Kwan
Money
Canada
Become