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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

Name

Writing

Way

" 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. "

" Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull. "

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

Sometimes

Care

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

Hanya Yanagihara

Conservative

Kids

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I always wanted to be a scientist. I don't really have any writer friends. "

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

" I have only a few really enviable skills, but packing - condensing just the right amount of stuff into a single bag, whether the trip is for a weekend or, as in this case, seven weeks - is one of them. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Publishing is a business, and I completely understand it. But when you don't have to depend on writing for your identity or your income, you can do whatever you want. "