Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Pachinko, like all gambling, is rigged. The house always wins. It's a central metaphor of life. It's rigged, but you keep playing. "
Min Jin Lee
House
Gambling
Always
Related Quotes:
" We're always observing, and we're cautious people. We really want attention, but at the same time, we're ashamed of wanting attention. All those bizarre qualities of being outside are necessary for being a writer. "
Min Jin Lee
Time
Always
People
" I do have love for Japan. At the same time, I have a complex relationship with Japan because I'm Korean. But I think it shows the strength of a country when you can talk about the past transparently. "
Min Jin Lee
Love
Relationship
Strength
" I was very interested in history, but I also thought, you know, history is not that interesting sometimes, and it can feel a bit medicinal. "
Min Jin Lee
Thought
You
History
" It's my belief that I was a writer - a very hardworking writer - well before I was published. I did care what others thought, and it was embarrassing when people asked me what I had published, so I didn't talk much about writing; rather, I just kept writing. "
Min Jin Lee
People
Writing
Care
" I had thought that Tokyo would be like New York City, but it wasn't. I'd imagined that they'd be similar in their bustle and noise level, but, in fact, Tokyo is a very calm metropolis. The bright lights and hectic night-life images so often found in advertisements and Western media do not reflect every day Japan. "
Min Jin Lee
City
Thought
Media
" I have romantic ideas about home and what it should mean. "
Min Jin Lee
Should
Mean
Romantic
" For me, writing a historical novel was really hard. I love history as a subject and majored in it in college. I think, in a way, my training made it worse for me because I knew how important it was to focus on document-based analysis, and I really didn't want to get stuff wrong. "
Min Jin Lee
College
Training
Focus
" For me, whatever you write about should be worthy of your attention, worthy of your gifts. That's very important. "
Min Jin Lee
Attention
Important
You
" I thought, 'Nobody wants this book, and I'm an idiot for having worked on it so hard.' But to succeed in writing, you must be willing to look stupid for a long time. 'Pachinko' took so long because I got it wrong so many times. "
Min Jin Lee
Time
Writing
Thought
" I love most New England towns. "
Min Jin Lee
Most
Love
England
" I think that social migration to another economic class requires a kind of negotiating with yourself. And also, there's so much ambivalence in your heart about who you are and who you're really not. "
Min Jin Lee
Think
You
Yourself
" There's a lot of freedom in failure, and I can see that now. "
Min Jin Lee
Freedom
Lot
See
" I think that what's bizarre to me about life is that sometimes you have to have everything taken away before you experience grace or before you actually recognize that grace can happen to you. "
Min Jin Lee
Think
You
Life
" I think that the shame of being different is very painful for a lot of people. "
Min Jin Lee
Think
People
Shame
" The omniscient narrator is a bizarre technique, when you think about it, and no one uses it much anymore. But for the novels I want to write, it's the only approach that makes sense to me. "
Min Jin Lee
You
Write
Want
" People often think of America as a classless society, but, of course, that isn't true. Within immigrant communities, there's an enormous distinction of class, depending on who your parents are, and that kind of thing comes out really quick in things like marriage and interpersonal relationships. "
Min Jin Lee
Marriage
Society
People
" I got married when I was 24 and met my husband when I was 22, so what I know about men in a personal experience could literally fill an index card. "
Min Jin Lee
Men
Husband
Personal
" I find putting oneself out there difficult. I think writing and sharing writing require different skill sets. I want to be read, but it takes courage to ask someone to read your work. "
Min Jin Lee
Skill
Think
Writing
" As an artist, my wheelhouse is 19th-century literature. I want to write realist novels in a Victorian sense, and the writers I admire in that style tend to do omniscient narration. "
Min Jin Lee
Artist
Style
Literature
" I find being an adult very difficult. Being an adult artist, Asian American, incredibly difficult. Or trying, anyway. "
Min Jin Lee
Find
Asian
Artist
" When my family was living in Tokyo, there was a year when we couldn't go back to the States for Thanksgiving, and we went to Seoul. Mandu is a highly satisfying substitute for turkey and trimmings. "
Min Jin Lee
Thanksgiving
Living
Back
" I really love Japan, and I liked living there very much, and there are so many terrific things about Japan. However, I do think what's amazing is that Japan really prides itself on being monoracial. It doesn't have the same kind of idea as in the U.K. or Canada or the United States, in which the idea of diversity is a strength. "
Min Jin Lee
Amazing
Diversity
Strength
" I like making things. I enjoy putting words and images on a blank space. There should be joy in the writing itself because parts of it are so challenging and lonesome. I take great pleasure in reading, researching, and interviewing. I enjoy forming my sentences and revising them to make them clean. "
Min Jin Lee
Joy
Reading
Great
" I have to be honest about this: I wouldn't tell a lot of kids to go and be writers. It's a tough, tough business. It's not a business. It's more like a tough road. It's a really tough road. "
Min Jin Lee
Go
Business
Honest
" I don't hold any contempt for people who are practicing law. I know how hard it is, I know how hard they work, and I know some of them who are so unhappy with it. "
Min Jin Lee
Know
Unhappy
Work
" If I meet a wise person, I think, 'Yes, tell me more about parenting, about marriage, about how to stay in love. Tell me more about how to be a decent person living in a world that's filled with chaos.' "
Min Jin Lee
Parenting
Marriage
Love
" We need to recognize how difficult and important being a mother is. "
Min Jin Lee
Important
Difficult
How
" Education is a beautiful, liberating thing, but I think that tying in education and status, and the need to do well at every cost, is toxic. "
Min Jin Lee
Think
Toxic
Beautiful
" After I quit being a lawyer in '95, I was having a lot of trouble writing. Then I read somewhere that Willa Cather read a chapter of the Bible every day before she started work. I thought, 'Okay, I'll try it.' Before each writing session, I started to read the Bible like a writer, thinking about language, character, and themes. "
Min Jin Lee
Work
Bible
Character
" As a woman of colour, as a person who is a minority, I believe its important that other people know about my language and I don't necessarily have to explain. In the same way, when I read 19th-century literature and if I have to understand a Latin phrase or a French phrase, it is incumbent upon me to learn it. "
Min Jin Lee
People
Believe
Language