Quotes from Hanya Yanagihara

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

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.

I think I passed up a lot of opportunities for love because I was too interested in identity politics.

Any frequent visitor to Hawaii is fixated on mapping how the islands have changed since their last visit.

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

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.

I think there are patterns of the aftermath of colonization that you see echoed in cultures and communities across the world.

Between their rise in the thirteenth century and their sudden fall in the seventeenth, when the line abruptly ended, the Medicis produced three popes, two queens, and many Florentine rulers, and they supported the work of Galileo, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Botticelli - a veritable parade of geniuses.

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.

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.

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

I don't believe in post-racial or post-gay or post-anything, but I do think within a certain group of friends, what matters less is the specificities of race and sexuality, and what matters more is the shared experience, shared language and shared cultural touch points.

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.

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

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.

I think anything goes in fiction as long as it fits within the interior logic of the work itself and is presented in a disciplined manner.

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.

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.

The beauty of a Moroccan riad is undeniable, but even the most die-hard fan may find herself growing a little weary of what can come to feel like a one-size-fits-all aesthetic: tilework, white Berber rugs, woolen tribal throw pillows in reds and ochers, cut-metal lanterns.

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.

So much of writing isn't the fun parts like we get to discuss. It is sitting there putting the words down.

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

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.

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.