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" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

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" Misanthropy is born, I think, out of an almost oppressive sense of loneliness, a conviction that there's no one on earth who understands you. I don't think misanthropes hate people: They hate that people hate them. "

Hanya Yanagihara

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

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" My father was a research doctor at the National Institutes of Health in the early 1980s, and you couldn't work in the field and not know about D. Carleton Gajdusek, who my father often mentioned. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" Although both of us were raised on Oahu, in Honolulu, my mother has always had fond memories of Maui; this was, after all, where she and my father, then penniless yet oddly optimistic newlyweds, honeymooned in 1969. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" The term 'pashmina' is often used interchangeably with 'cashmere,' but in reality, pashmina is a specific type of very fine, lofty cashmere, woven from a specific type of goat - one indigenous to northern India, Nepal, and Pakistan, and harvested and woven there as well. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" Photography is always a kind of stealing. A theft from the subject. Artists are assaulters in a lot of ways, and the viewer is complicit in that assault. "

Hanya Yanagihara

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

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

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

Hanya Yanagihara

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

Hanya Yanagihara

" Where most of the country is, well, hot - from the bone-baking dry heat of the desert to the flesh-melting humidity of Kerala in the south - Kashmir is cool: so cool, in fact, that in the winter, the temperatures can sink to sub-zero. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" I have never wanted a family. I don't believe in marriage, though I obviously believe it should be legal for everyone who wants to do it. But it is not something I believe in, nor do the characters in my book, nor do any of my friends. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" What makes a fulfilling relationship or fulfilling life is not simply found in another. It's found in a group of others. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" Every traveler knows too well the endless quest for the perfect travel bag: the one that's stylish enough to carry through Paris, sturdy enough to tote around Peru, and - most important - doesn't make your shoulder sag even before you've loaded it up with everything you need for a day of sightseeing. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" There is something uniquely American about the motel: It speaks to the transient nature of America itself, one enabled and encouraged by our roads and highways. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" The first thing I do whenever I go to Thailand is seek out the closest restaurant or stall selling mango-and-sticky rice: it's a little hillock of glutinous rice drenched in lashings of coconut milk and served with fresh mango. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" Jaipur, like Florence or Kyoto, other artisan-rich cities to which it roughly compares, has always been known for its craftsmanship. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara

" 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. "

Hanya Yanagihara