The orchid's association in Chinese culture with such virtues as elegance, good taste, friendship, and fertility goes all the way back to Confucius himself, who was said to have a particular attachment to the flowers. — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
There's a distinct unease about Americans when they are outside the United States. I can't say quite what it is, but they are easily… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
I made the decision that I didn't want to spend my life in rooms and write about rooms, or else make books that are… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
'The Odyssey' is a great poem to refugee-dom... Odysseus is not entirely a refugee... he's somebody who's blown off course. The entire book is… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
I'll wager there isn't a human being on earth who doesn't believe in luck, however rational they pretend to be in public life. In… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
The drinker is a Dionysiac, a dancer who sits still, a mocker. He doesn't need your seriousness or your regard. He just needs a… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
Bangkok is infamously mired in lurid contradiction, but it's also a city of subtle and distorted moods that journalism and film have hitherto mostly… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
So many writers live their whole lives in rooms. You can be too civilised in the environment you have around you, too oriented towards… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
I read Gide's 'The Immoralist' over and over as a teenager. I was obsessed with it. It's written with such simplicity and dread, and… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
Mongolians are epic drinkers and carousers, and in this respect, they are extremely congenial to my own way of thinking. — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
One winter, I went to Erfoud to research trilobites and got to know the quarries, the dealers, and the remote mining villages. They are… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
Sometimes you can publish a first novel in a kind of lyrical flourish, but it is not really a lyrical form. The beautiful truths… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
I spent a fair amount of time in Communist Poland when I was young - my wife was from there - and I had… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
I've got everything against likable characters. Likable characters are usually completely forgettable, and we don't really care. I think we love villains... precisely because… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
At the end of the 18th century, a young British explorer named George Bogle became one of the first Westerners to penetrate the mysterious… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
I suppose I reached the limit of what I could do with nonfiction books, perhaps because they never felt quite intense enough - it's… — Lawrence Osborne Copy Share Image
