Quotes from Celeste Ng

What's the best way to ensure a supply of good books in the future? Support up-and-coming writers now.

Narratively speaking, innocent misunderstandings are disappointing. Arbitrary events are also disappointing. The stories that really grab our attention involve not accidents but people doing things on purpose - to get things they desperately want.

One of the things I like so much about 'Goodnight Moon' is the way it leaves room for ambiguity.

Short of the dishonest, the illegal, and the cruel, there's only one thing my son could do that would really disappoint me: not liking reading.

I began using the #smallacts hashtag on Twitter shortly after the 2016 election as a way to resist. To resist the intolerance growing in our nation, to resist an upcoming administration that I believe threatens to pull us backward and strip rights from those already marginalized.

In fiction you're not often writing about the typical; you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Part of it comes from feeling I was the only Asian or person of colour... another part comes from my personality: I'm an introvert, and my usual survival mode in a large group is to stand by a wall and watch everybody.

I have an interest in the outsider.

I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.

The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.

A love of reading shows empathy, the desire to understand how others live or act or might act - and why.