Gene Luen Yang

“I do not make mistakes, little monkey. A monkey I intended you to be. A monkey you are.”

— Gene Luen Yang

“Class, I'd like us all to give a warm Mayflower elementary welcome to your new friend and classmate Jing Jang!" "Jin Wang."…

— Gene Luen Yang

My best teachers, the teachers who had the deepest effect on my reading, combined the two. They would mix required reading with…

— Gene Luen Yang

Sometimes, a fight you cannot win is still worth fighting.

— Gene Luen Yang

Zombies aren't about zombies. It's not about the dead bodies. I think it's a very hopeful subgenre. It says that regardless of…

— Gene Luen Yang

“Tell me, Little Bao, have you ever gotten close to woman?' 'Well. . . ' 'Close enough to smell her?' 'No.' 'Ah!…

— Gene Luen Yang

I find that nowadays it's just gotten harder for me to read for fun. It feels like all of my reading is…

— Gene Luen Yang

Wait." "So what am I supposed to do now?" "You know, Jin, I would have saved myself from five hundred years' imprisonment…

— Gene Luen Yang

In the '40s and '50s, a lot of teachers and librarians saw the graphic novel as the enemy of reading.

— Gene Luen Yang

If you look at our world, we're becoming so much more diverse in every sense of the word. It's not just about…

— Gene Luen Yang

I was always a slow reader, from the very beginning. I remember in first grade our teacher divided us into groups, and…

— Gene Luen Yang

What is China but a people and their stories?

— Gene Luen Yang

As somebody who's kind of a technophile, I'm interested in how traditional and digital publishing connect. Maybe ten years ago they were…

— Gene Luen Yang

“Appa has feelings, too!”

— Gene Luen Yang

I liked interacting with students. I liked having coworkers. For a long time, I was really worried that sitting at home by…

— Gene Luen Yang

I think reading has got so many more enemies now that graphic novels have kind of flipped over to that side.

— Gene Luen Yang

It's easy to become anything you wish . . . so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul.

— Gene Luen Yang

Superheroes are also about immigrants. Superman, the prototype of all superheroes, is a prototypical immigrant. His homeland was in crisis, so his…

— Gene Luen Yang

To find your true identity within the will of Tze Yo Tzuh...that is the highest of all freedoms.

— Gene Luen Yang

Coming from the world of comics, I was very surprised that writers and illustrators, for the most part, don't talk, and they…

— Gene Luen Yang

“Oh, cruel abandonment! My bones turn to dust beneath the gaze of your ever-mocking smile!”

— Gene Luen Yang

I think a lot of us who are in books now were nervous children.

— Gene Luen Yang

At the very core of what a comic is, time and space are kind of the same thing. When your reader moves…

— Gene Luen Yang

One of the ways [racism] pops up is when they turn a comic into a live-action movie and there's this temptation to…

— Gene Luen Yang

I think a lot of us go through a period where we feel like outsiders, and deal with that by wishing we…

— Gene Luen Yang