Quotes from Kevin Kwan

I remembered that my grandfather had spent his teenage years in Shanghai and that he went back after he finished medical school to work there in a hospital. So I went back into my family archives and was able to find out his exact address; it was a street that was in the French Concession.

'China rich' is the new 'crazy rich.' It's a new level of outrageousness. It comes from this world where overnight fortunes have been made, but the fortunes are so ginormous compared to anything we've ever seen in the history of the world.

My books are comedies; I want to take my readers on a jet-setting romp, make them laugh, make them swoon at the beautiful settings, and maybe even make their mouths water at all the food.

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.

I have pictures of my grandmother from the 1920s and '30s in avant-garde dresses that looked like they could have come from the House of Worth or Lucien Lelong. She would never say if they were couture, but I do recall her telling me, 'All my clothes and shoes came from Paris.'

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.

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.

Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.

In Asia, it's customary to get together with your entire extended family on a regular basis, and it's all rife with politics.

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.

Such huge money has been made in China - it can be hundreds of millions in a year - and there's a need to validate it by showing what they can buy and how much of it.

It would have been amazing to have been a student at Oxford during that golden moment in the 1910s, rubbing elbows with the likes of Aldous Huxley and T.E. Lawrence, before World War I shattered everything forever.

One of the dreams on my wish list is to spend more time in Thailand.

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.

I'm naturally a shy, quiet person.

There's always been this tradition of satirizing these rich groups of people.

I would not call my family 'traditional Chinese.' We were more what I would term the Colonial Chinese.

The most important thing to keep in mind is the incredible diversity of talent that's out there - there are so many great actors from all over Asia, from Singapore and Hong Kong to the Philippines and Mainland China, not to mention many great Asian-American actors who are eager for fun and challenging roles.

My grandmother used to get her shoes made in Paris in the '30s, and they would be shipped to her in Singapore.

In Singapore, there may be 50 old-money families, but you wouldn't know them to look at them.

I come from an old establishment family from Singapore.

To me, families are fascinating. I choose to explore it through comedy and through comic situations.

I'm a writer. I'm naturally introverted, so being the public face of something, I don't think I do it well.

People are often disappointed when they meet me because I'm not this giant, flamboyant - you know, I don't wear sequined jackets.