Chang-Rae Lee

I rarely talk about work with writers, and I love getting together with writers. I think writers are great to get together…

— Chang-Rae Lee

“We have to wonder what this might suggest about the relationship between the public realm and private lives in our settlement. Some…

— Chang-rae Lee

“He handed her a plastic container of dried fruit Loreen had packed for the trip to use as a steering wheel so…

— Chang-rae Lee

I'm interested in people who find themselves in places, either of their choosing or not, and who are forced to decide how…

— Chang-Rae Lee

Unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe, I don't like proper dress while working. I like writing in pajama-like clothing, which eases…

— Chang-Rae Lee

I'm not the sort of writer who can plan out things. Mostly I have no idea where I'm going.

— Chang-Rae Lee

What's fun about a dystopian novel is that we can enjoy and be entertained. But that world is only slightly different, right?…

— Chang-Rae Lee

I think their pasts are treated with a voice that sees their role as those of innocents. That's reflected in the past…

— Chang-Rae Lee

I don't like to use writing assignments, exercises. I think too often people get comfortable writing in that vein, but you can't…

— Chang-Rae Lee

I did a lot of reading of first person accounts from Koreans and combatants and aid workers. And I spoke to relatives.…

— Chang-Rae Lee

I write on a computer. On breaks, I'll make myself green tea. I don't want something too caffeinated. I guess I don't…

— Chang-Rae Lee

Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going…

— Chang-Rae Lee

Even though I went to Exeter and Yale, and I enjoyed all the trappings of those places, I think at the same…

— Chang-Rae Lee

“He should have had more faith in himself rather than give in to his weaker qualities, in particular his overeagerness to please…

— Chang-rae Lee

What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But…

— Chang-Rae Lee

“This is how we were meant for each other. How we make our living. The lives of frustrated poets and imposters. This,…

— Chang-rae Lee

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

— Chang-Rae Lee

Before I had published anything, I still hung out with people who liked to write. None of us had published, so there…

— Chang-Rae Lee

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the…

— Chang-Rae Lee

Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but…

— Chang-Rae Lee

“Moment to moment, we act freely, we make decisions and form opinions and there is very little to throttle us. We think…

— Chang-rae Lee

I'll read pretty much anywhere and anytime, but for a while now, I've really enjoyed reading on flights, especially the longer hauls,…

— Chang-Rae Lee

“I wonder if my father, given the chance, would have wished to go back to the time before he made all that…

— Chang-rae Lee

“I still imagine Mr. Kim's and Mr. Yoon's children, lonely for their fathers, gratefully eating whatever was brought home to them, our…

— Chang-rae Lee

Maybe someone's who's a different kind of writer [would think otherwise] - someone who'd be just as comfortable writing essays on what…

— Chang-Rae Lee